


My Self is Just Me: Please Get Me The Fuck Out

by Zeke21



Series: Dean Winchester and The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Altered States, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Astral Projection, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Castiel (Supernatural) Whump, Childhood Memories, Cursed Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Hates Witches, Dean Winchester Whump, Dean Winchester in Hell, Dean Winchester-centric, Declarations Of Love, Demon Dean Winchester, Emotionally Repressed Dean Winchester, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hunt Gone Wrong, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Meta, Multi, Multiple Dean Winchesters, Non-Consensual Kissing, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Queer Themes, Rape/Non-con Elements, Repression, Revelations, Sam Winchester Whump, Season/Series 12, Spells & Enchantments, Swearing, Teenagers, Torture, Trippy, Witches, as always, but also supernatural, dean on dean violence, except for me, forgive me i've been reading brecht, it's basically, no one has any fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-06-02 04:37:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 31,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19434079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeke21/pseuds/Zeke21
Summary: In the aftermath of a hunt gone wrong, Dean, Sam and Cas are trapped within Dean's own memories. With the only way out hidden somewhere between the layers of Dean's past, and with both the spell and Dean trying their hardest to keep them out, it's up to Sam and Cas to lead the way - without getting distracted by any secrets they discover, of course. Secrets that threaten to overwhelm and entrap them.Essentially, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind meets inside out meets supernatural, hope you enjoy it.





	1. Falling Through the 4th Wall

**Author's Note:**

> hello, I can't quite believe this is actually happening. I've been working on this for a longgggggg time, so it feels a little weird to be finally posting it. A couples things before I start:  
> 1\. this is more or less written (just needs a little padding), so I should hopefully be able to upload it fairly swiftly. I'm not going to commit to a schedule, however, because I'm moving around a lot this summer and won't always have my computer with me.  
> 2\. I understand that they did something similarish in season 14 to free Dean from Michael, but I actually started writing this way before that happened so catch me being ahead of the curve!  
> 3\. I've left the timing of this fic kind of ambiguous - but it takes place sometime in season 12. Mary isn't really mentioned or brought up mainly because I don't watch supernatural all that regularly anymore so i don't have the strongest grasp on her character and i really wanted this fic to focus on the relationship of the main three.  
> 4\. The tags aren't complete, but I'm trying to avoid spoilers, so bear in mind some of the warnings may change.

There’s a scream, a dramatic puff of sickly green smoke, and a gunshot. A body hits the floor. Sam and Cas freeze in the doorway. Dean Blinks at them. His eyes feel hot – there’s green smoke flickering over them, clouding his vision. He stretches a hand out – trying to warn them away. They don’t listen. They run forward, Sam grabs his shoulder, Cas grabs his wrist. They begin to ask if he’s ok.

Then the set falls apart. The walls and furniture of the witch’s house flatten and collapse like cardboard. The audience blinks in confusion at the stage, then starts to clap. The audience is all Dean. A Dean in every seat (and crowded into the isles as well) all dressed the same, all looking about the same age, all bearing the same expression of good-humoured anticipation – as if excited by this latest twist.

“Uh,” Dean says.

Then things get really weird.

*TITLE SEQUENCE*

“Why does it always have to be me?” Dean says again.

“Huh?” Sam asks distractedly. They’ve been walking for what feels like hours, and for what feels like miles. But it’s impossible to tell if they’re even moving in the complete blackness. It feels as if their feet are touching something smooth and solid, which Sam hopes fervently, is at least a floor or ground and not just air. Then at least they’d be moving towards (or away) from something. Anything, surely, is better than nothing. “What do you mean?”

“Why can’t we get magicked into _your_ brain for once?”

“Guess I’m not the protagonist of this episode,” Sam sighs, “maybe next week.”

“And maybe if you stopped running headfirst into danger,” Cas interjects from the side, voice strained, “you wouldn’t always be the first to get hit.”

“Yeah, if you weren’t such a reckless idiot then maybe less idiotic things would happen to you.”

“Hey, I don’t write the script: I just say my lines. Chuck’s the one who’s got it out for me.”

“Or whoever’s writing them now.”

“I just wanna know why they get off fucking me over: why don’t you two ever get turned into dogs or have your memories wiped? Or, while we’re on the subject, why has almost everything bad happened to me in the past few seasons? Purgatory, the mark, being a demon, Amara –”

“Hey that’s not true! Cas _died._ I was possessed.”

But Dean waves away their pain with a casual hand. “I’m not sayin you two haven’t suffered, I’m just sayin’, there’s an imbalance of suffering. And that’s just what’s canon.”

“I guess there’s something special about you,” Sam says sarcastically. “Maybe your character just has more untapped potential than ours? Or maybe you can be relied upon to react in a more entertaining manner?”

“Maybe,” Cas says acidly, the fraying ends of his patience clearly audible, “if you two stopped asking pointless meta questions we’d actually be able to make some progress out of here? Instead of just walking in circles?”

“How can you even tell it’s a circle?”

“Considering we’ve been having variations of this conversation for the past hour, I think we can infer.”

“Wait,” Sam stops, “are you saying that Dean’s state of mind while he’s in his own mind is affecting the state of the mind that his mind is in?”

The space around them turns a dirty red. “I think you gave me a headache,” Dean observes dryly.

“Yes,” Cas says irritably. “The spell was designed to trap us: it’s going to use anything it can find to distract or hinder us from finding the exit and to keep us from accessing it, _including_ merging with you and reflecting your emotions. Soon, however, it should begin to manifest more…concretely: try to oppose us more directly. Fortunately, however,” he adds, looking at Dean, “since we’re in here with you, we should be able to figure out where in your subconscious the exit is located relatively easily.”

“How can we even be sure there _is_ an exit?” Dean wants to know, sounding gloomy. “We might just be stuck in here forever.”

Sam shakes his head. “You can’t just go into someone’s mind without their permission – not this physically at least. Think about everything Crowley had to do to get in my brain when Gadreel possessed me,” he shudders slightly at the memory. “The spell had to make an opening, and we’ll be able to come out the way we came in.” Hopefully, he adds silently.

“An opening?” Dean sounds apprehensive.

“A vulnerability,” Cas explains. “It will have latched on to a particularly strong emotion. We just need to find the source of that emotion.”

“Huh,” Dean grunts, “so you’re saying that we’ll have to search through my memories and shit in order to find the door back to reality but that the spell is likely to try and throw up distractions and barriers in order to keep us trapped in here for as long as possible and cause as much pain and division as possible?”

“Yes, exactly so you need to –”

“And,” Dean cuts in, holding up a hand to silence him, “it’s likely that the spell will be able to access said memories as well as my dreams and desires to construct whatever it thinks will be most effective at achieving this end? And that it will likely hide the exit in the most private and painful part of my brain it can find? Forcing us to explore my most traumatic or most shameful experiences? ”

“Uh, yes,” Cas blinks in surprise. “I suppose so.”

“ _And,_ considering I’ve spent more or less my entire life constructing a careful façade of strength based on nobody (but _especially_ Sam) knowing how I really feel, _and_ that I’ve spent most of my adult life avoiding any attempts to talk about or share my feelings and traumas, it’s likely that both the spell _and my own subconscious_ would conspire to keep you two away from anything that might give you insight into my mind and help us escape?”

Sam opens his mouth to swear, but Dean has already vanished, leaving them alone in the black nothingness.

“Well shit,” he says to empty air instead. 

*

“You know,” Dean says to himself, the only other himself on the otherwise bare stage. “It’s not like tricking Sam an’ Cas will actually do anything except piss them off. They’re gonna have to see it all eventually.”

“Yeah I get that,” he snaps. “I just need a bit of time, ok?” he sits cross-legged centre stage, refusing to meet the audiences’ (his) eyes. “It’s not like I asked for this.”

“We know,” he calls from the audience, “but tough shit. When has it ever been easy for us? When has hiding ever worked? Let’s just get it over with: rip the band aid off.”

“And take half my skin off with it? I don’t know about you but I feel like bleeding out in front of them today.” He rubs a hand over his face, wishing to be anywhere else. Wishing for some peace at least so he can think. He can feel a thousand pairs of eyes (his own eyes) on him. It’s making him itchy. “Can’t I just…ease them in? Keep them busy for a little while?” He says the last part quietly, more thinking out loud than anything – but of course, the other hims hear it.

He smiles to himself, “As you wish.” Then he vanishes, leaving Dean alone on the stage once more. The audience mutters: some seem annoyed, others seem scared, a few seem pleased. There’s rustling towards the back: and the crowd of Deans begins to part, their faces bearing expressions that seem equal parts surprise, respect and fear.

“Idjit,” says a gruff voice, and Dean looks up in surprise as Bobby elbows his way to the front. He’s greyer than he was in life, and slightly more wrinkled; trucker cap somehow more battered. He looks, Dean figures, how he thinks Bobby would look today. Or maybe he looks how Dean treated him as looking. “You know that’s exactly what the spell wants.”

“Bobby? What’re you doing here?”

“Well clearly someone has to talk sense to you, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be you.”

“It’s nice to see you too.”

Bobby ignores him. “This spell you’re under is gonna do most everything it can to trap you. I know you know you gotta fight it.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“No: you’re hiding.”

“I’m strategizin’.”

“Oh yeah? Lockin’ yourself away, keeping Sam and Cas out? What kinda strategy is that?” Bobby crosses his arms.

“One that means I can walk outta this with some of my dignity still intact,” Dean snaps. “One that gives me a bit of time to find the way out of this shit show without anyone else gettin’ to rifle through my damn brain, Ok?”

“Well then you best start looking boy,” Bobby grunts, “cos the longer they’re in here, the more likely they are to find stuff you don’t want them to see. And the longer that spell has you all twisted up with it, the more control it’ll get.”

“You don’t think I know that?” Dean can’t keep the frustration from his voice – and it’s not like Bobby doesn’t already know exactly how he’s feeling anyway. “I can _feel_ it inside me, Bobby, crawling through my head, putting itself inside me and I know I have to get it out before it eats me from the inside out. But…” he can’t finish his sentence but he doesn’t need to – he’s talking to himself after all.

Bobby seems to soften. “I know, son,” he says. “You’ve been through more than most of us, and now you’re going to have to through it all again. This whole situation is shitter than a gas station toilet – but at least it’s nothing you haven’t done before, and,” he looks directly into Dean’s eyes, “at least this time you don’t have to go through it alone.”

They stare at each other, and it’s Dean who breaks first. “I can’t, Bobby,” he whispers, ducking his head. “They’ll see everything. Everything I ever tried to hide or tried to lie about. They’ll know I’m not…they’ll see me for what I really am.”

“I know that you know that that’s bullshit.”

“Is it?” Dean demands. “Is it really? Yeah I know they probably won’t abandon me or anything but that doesn’t mean this won’t change everything does it?”

“Well, what can you do about it?” Bobby shakes his head. “You ain’t gonna be able to look through a whole damn life’s worth of memories on your own: not quickly at least.”

“I don’t need to do my whole life,” Dean points out. “Just the worst bits.”

Bobby rolls his eyes so hard Dean’s surprised they don’t get stuck. “Oh yeah,” he says in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “There’s a real winner of an idea: re-visit all your most traumatic and painful experiences one right after the other with no back-up and no support.”

“Like you said: It isn’t anything I haven’t done before, and I survived it all the first time round.”

“No you didn’t,” Bobby mutters darkly. “How many times’ve you died now?”

Dean ignores him. Dimly, he can already see the road ahead: just a re-run of the road so far, paved (he knows) with the best of intentions and leading straight too…

“Shit.” It’s as good as place as any to start. But how to get there? The moment he thinks it, the back wall of the theatre collapses into nothingness. Bright light – sunlight, floods the room as grass springs up between the seats – the dew gleaming slightly in the newly crisp air.

Dean walks off the edge of the stage, landing on the damp grass. The audience watches with mild interest as he walks past them, Bobby close behind, towards the trees that have begun to spring up at the back of the room – trunks stretching and widening, branches unfurling, leaves popping into existence.

“Nice effects,” one of him says, “we goin’ to Narnia or something?”

“Or somethin’,” Dean throws over his shoulder. “Just sit back and enjoy the show.”


	2. Dean all the way Down

The nothingness has at least solidified into a something – growing gradually around them, sketched in lines of gold. Sam hopes this is a good thing, even if it’s not a something he can exactly understand. There seem to be walls and a floor – curving above and around them, only slightly taller than Sam. It’s kind of like a tunnel he dimly remembers visiting with Jess once at an aquarium. The water had pressed in oppressively on all sides, and he’d been acutely aware of the fragility of glass. Fish and the shadows of sharks had passed over and around them: eyeing them with a bemused amusement at their foolishness, their arrogance, their obvious out-of-placeness. He’d held Jess’ hand tightly in his as they’d shuffled through, too busy searching for cracks to pay much attention to the fish.

Dean’s brain seems to have a similar vibe – only it’s not water that flows around them, it’s something that could be oil or could be smoke. A cloudy and viscous substance; constantly shifting in a patchwork of colours – here a murky purple, here a vivid blue, there a bloody red. Occasionally, there are flashes of golden light (like lightning viewed from above). At semi-regular intervals, the light has collected into small pools, flickering at them like tiny suns. Once, Cas reaches out to touch one, but Sam pulls him back before he can reach. He doesn’t want to discover what’s keeping them separated from whatever this all is – doesn’t want to find the cracks in the glass.

Both behind and in front of them, the tunnel stretches, long and straight. Nothing marks the spot where it began, and nothing ahead of them suggests an ending. There’s no obvious light source, yet they can see everything clearly enough as they edge forwards, trying to find some discernible pattern or meaning in the walls as they move past. Or maybe the walls are moving around them? It’s not like they’re in a physical space right now. Or are they? Have they literally been transformed into electrical impulses moving through Dean’s brain matter, and this is the only way their consciousnesses are able to conceive it, or are they in some magical simulation created by the witch?

“Why does it matter? We’re still lost either way,” Cas answers sullenly when he asks. Sam is annoyed at his brother too, of course, but he can’t help but be amused at Cas’ petty resentment of being tricked.

“I just wanna make sure we aren’t gonna cause Dean actual, y’know, brain damage by stomping through his synapses.”

Cas softens immediately. “No we shouldn’t cause any physical problems: we’re in the gap between the real and spiritual dimensions: what you sometimes call the astral plane. Except instead of being in the shared, or at least open, space of dreams and visions, we’ve been trapped in the part of Dean that occupies the plane.”

“So like, a plane within a plane?"

“More or less.”

“So the exit…”

“Will take us into the astral plane proper, where I should be able to use my grace to bring us back to the real world.”

“So your grace is restricted in here?” Sam smiles, “that explains why you’re so pissed.”

“It doesn’t explain why you aren’t.”

“Oh I’m plenty pissed off,” Sam assures him. “But I also know Dean, and he’s not an idiot.”

Cas raises an eyebrow.

“Not a complete idiot,” Sam clarifies hastily. “He knows how this is gonna have to go down: or at least part of him does. We just need to find that part.”

“And how,” Cas asks morosely, “do you propose we do that?” He spreads both arms out to encompass the eternal tunnel stretching on either side and, in all likelihood, the hopelessness of the situation.

Sam is saved from answering by Dean, who pops casually back into existence beside them.

“Huh,” he surveys the scene in front of him, “who knew the inside of my brain was so…ineffable?” He squints slightly, and the tunnel melts into the familiar interior of the bunker: the golden lights dim, flatten, and stretch into doors: each with a long series of numbers on the front. “There,” Dean says, satisfied. “That’s a bit easier to work with conceptually, ain’t it?”

Sam eyes the figure suspiciously. “You’re not Dean.”

“I’m not _not_ Dean,” the Dean shaped figure counters, shrugging. “And isn’t everything here technically Dean? We’re in my head after all: it’s Dean all the way down.” He sighs at the stony looks on their faces. “Ok, ok, so I’m not the Dean you’re looking for: I’m just some kind of cerebral echo/ semi-sentient sentience tour guide. But: your Dean _did_ send me to help/hinder you, so that ought to count for something at least, right?”

“Help slash hinder?”

“Yeah,” Dean grimaces. “Look; there’s some pretty messed up shit in my brain and, no offence, but you two are the last people in the world I want seeing most of it. So I sent me to keep you two busy and safe while I look through some of the worst bits.”

“That’s idiotic,” Cas protests.

“What can I say? At least it’s in character.”

“Keep us busy how?” Sam wants to know.

But Dean only smiles a very un-Dean smile.

“How do we know we can trust you?” Sam asks. “How do we know that you’re part of Dean and not part of the spell?”

“Honestly, Sammy, I think I’m part of both,” Dean says seriously. “Look:” he stretches out his arms towards them as they turn translucent (flannel sleeves and all). The same multi-coloured fluid that was until recently circling lazily around them flows in the shape of Dean’s arms and hands: identical to the how the tunnel had looked, except for the ugly veins of green smoke that are slowly leaking into the surrounding colours. Sam and Cas gape in dismay until Dean pulls his arms away, the skin reverting back to normal.

“I know. Trippy – right??” He says casually, seemingly unconcerned by their reactions. “But I think it makes my point.”

“Ok, I believe that you’re at least a part of Dean,” Sam concedes. “But regardless of who – or what – you are, how do we even know you’re telling the truth?

“Because,” Dean says simply, “I can’t lie in here: no matter how much I want to.”

Sam and Cas glance at each other. Cas gestures slightly with his head, and they both move to the side – away from Dean (or whatever it is), who watches them with a slight grin on his face but doesn’t try to move any closer.

“We have literally no way of knowing how much – if anything – it’s said so far is true,” Cas surmises.

“I dunno, he’s been pretty forthcoming – more so than the real Dean would probably be. Besides, nothing he’s told us so far is particularly helpful to anyone; there’s no benefit for him to be lying about this.”

“I still don’t trust this,” Cas mutters. “He just wants to get us more lost.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Sam points out. “At least this way, we know we’re somewhere, even if it’s the wrong direction.”

“That’s the spirit,” Dean says cheerily from right beside them, and they both flinch back in shock. He’d made no sound as he’d moved. He gestures to the rows of doors lining the hallway. “So, where do you wanna start?”


	3. Or Something

“C’mon Bobby, keep up,” Dean throws over his shoulder, striding through the forest. “We haven’t got all day.”

“Screw you,” Bobby wheezes from behind him, where he’s having to jog slightly to stay within earshot. “You’re the one that remembers me as older than I actually was.”

“You’re just lucky I don’t remember you in that chair,” Dean throws back, laughing at the cursing he gets instead of a reply– he’s missed this more than he normally lets himself admit. “Don’t worry, it’s not much further,” even as he says it he comes to the place. He stops just inside the tree line and finally lets Bobby catch up. “Here.”

“Where – ah.” Bobby cuts off. It’s obvious. Beyond where they’re standing like rows of trees: flattened by some (as yet) unknown force into an almost perfect circle. The grass too is pressed flat into the ground – even scorched in a couple of places. At the dead centre of the clearing is a mound of dirt with a wooden cross sticking out of it.

“Yeah,” Dean goes to check his watch, but the face has melted: the numbers smudged into nothing. Still, the sun looks like it’s in the right position. “Should be right about…now.” 

On cue, a hand forces it way out the ground, smeared with mud and blood. Slowly, it’s followed by a gasping, leather-clad figure. Dean watches himself warily as he heaves himself onto the grass and takes his first real breath in 40 years, eyes blinking up at a sun he only dimly remembers. Bobby takes a step forward, but Dean throws a hand out. “Hold on, give me a moment.”

They wait as Dean drags himself to his feet, gaping at the destruction around him, before turning to regard the grave he just crawled out of. Then, with a quick glance towards them, he turns and sprints in the opposite direction.

“Good luck out there!” Dean calls after the retreating figure. “Ok, that makes things easier. And saves us from diggin’ at least,” He strides forward.

“You think the exit is gonna be in your grave?” Bobby asks dubiously as they approach the upturned earth.

“I should be so lucky,” Dean snorts. “Nah, I just figured this would be the fastest way down. Chronologically and metaphorically speaking: see?” He gestures to the hole: a faint red glow is emanating from far below the earth. He gets on his knees, leaning his face over. Faintly, he can smell sulphur. It’s enough to make him hesitate, shivers running up his spine, fingers curling themselves unconsciously into the grass.

“You sure about this Son?” Bobby asks him softly.

“Yup,” but he doesn’t sound sure – not even to his own ears.

“Call Sam and Cas,” Bobby pleads. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I do Bobby, but it’ll be fine,” Dean smiles weakly. “See you on the other side.”

The tunnel is small and cramped, but he forces himself in. The air grows hotter and hotter and the smell of sulphur grows stronger as he descends, almost unbearably so. It’s a strange reverse of the original event: instead of widening, the earth seems to close in around him and push him upwards, as if it’s trying to force him back to the surface. Every molecule of his mind is telling him that this is a bad idea, but he grits his teeth and powers through. Eventually, painfully, he hears a crack and the earth crumbles, depositing him in a dirty heap at Bobby’s feet.

“How the _fuck_ did you get ahead of me?” He demands from the ground.

“I ain’t real,” Bobby gives him the ‘idjit’ look, speaking very slowly as if to a three year old. “I’m just a manifestation of your inner conflict magically anthropomorphised into a form you can argue with. I didn’t _feel_ like squeezing my prematurely aged ass down that aneurysm _you_ call a tunnel so I _manifested_ myself here ahead of you.” He looks around, grunts. “So this is hell? Doesn’t look like much.”

Dean gets to his feet, trying to brush off the worst of the mud from his clothes. The dirt falls from his clothes and dissolves into nothingness as it hits the floor, and he stops, not really sure if he should even bother anyway. Above him, there’s an ominous grumbling and creaking as the hole leading back to the surface closes up, taking the last of the sunlight with it. Dean ignores the dull dread that’s pooling in his stomach, pushes aside the thought that he’s just trapped himself here and takes stock of his surroundings – unimpressed Bobby included. They’re standing in a long passageway, carved unevenly from bedrock – the floor scored with what could be claw marks or could just be lines. The passage stretches into darkness in either direction. The only light source is the faint red glow seeping through cracks in the rock: dimly illuminating their faces, but leaving puddles of shadows that aren’t actually shadows on the walls. “What were you expecting?” he asks.

“I dunno: fire and brimstone? Demons playin’ golden fiddles and makin' human s’mores over an open flame? This just seems like more of what you got going on upstairs.”

Dean snorts, “You think we have that sorta budget? For TV? Nah, this is just the hallway. Or the green room: they ain’t gonna waste their best shit out here,” he gestures towards the pools of shadows on the wall. “ _These_ are where the real magic happens.”

“And you think the exit’ll be in one of ‘em?”

“Got to be: these are some of my worst, most shameful memories.”

“They’re also the first place you’d look,” Bobby points out. “This spell is smart, and it knows you. Shit, it _is_ you: it’ll know exactly where you won’t wanna go.”

“You think I wanna be _here?_ ” Dean snaps. “We’re in fucking hell! Where else _could_ it be?”

“Somewhere else that’s even worse than hell for you, somewhere so bad you’re refusin’ to even let yourself think about it, somewhere you’ve buried so deep you don’t even know what it is or where it is or even what it means anymore.”

“Yeah well, what would you know about it?” Dean turns away, walking past the dark holes in the wall. He pauses in front of one, considering. Each one is identical to the one before it, and there’s nothing on the walls that gives any clue to when exactly they might be. He stops in front of a random patch of darkness, considering. They must be near the end, if he came in through his grave – which means, at least, there shouldn’t be hordes of demons on the other side. Just something much worse.

“Gee I don’t know: I’m only part of your brain,” Bobby sarcastically calls from behind him. “The only part that actually seems to be working right now.”

“You’re not…” Dean casts about for a comeback, “…shut up,” he finishes weakly.

Bobby rolls his eyes but, mercifully, doesn’t comment. “Fine,” he says instead, in the tone of someone trying to explain why two plus two equals four, “let’s say we do it your way. You got 40 years of blood and torture down here, how are you gonna find what you think you’re lookin’ for before Sam and Cas catch up with ya?”

“I’m gonna ask for directions,” Dean says, then pushes his face into the shadow before Bobby can even open his mouth to reply.

The heat is instantaneous, enough to melt the skin off his face if he were let himself believe it were real. Luckily, it’s just a memory ( _just a memory_ ), and _his_ skin stays intact. The same, unfortunately, can’t be said for the memory of him across the room, whose face is sliding off in gruesome chunks of charred skin and blood, revealing the manic skull beneath. His nose has worn away completely, leaving his face a jack-o-lantern parody of itself. His eyes are still intact, but a thin grey mist (darkening to black at the edges) obscures the irises. His hands (not _his_ hands, the memory of his hands) are buried deeply in a quivering mass of flesh – too far gone in the throes of ecstatic pain to be called a person anymore. He twitches them and the mass screams, begging in a slurred language he doesn’t understand – though the intent would be clear enough to anyone’s ears. His memory starts to laugh as he looks up to meet Dean’s eyes.

“You’re a little too late here pumpkin,” it mocks him, “What you’re lookin’ for is 8 doors down thattaway,” He jerks his head to the left, smiles, and a section of his cheek corrodes, so the smile reaches all the way back. “Though why not just skip to the end and join the fun? You know how it is down here. We could always use an extra pair of –”

Dean yanks his head back quickly, gasping for air. He leans against the wall, not trusting his shaking legs to hold him entirely upright. He blinks at the ground until it stops swimming. He can feel his heart beating fast in his chest, the tunnel rumbles – it seems to be laughing at him. 

“Dean!” Bobby places a concerned hand on his shoulder.

“I’m ok,” Dean tries to assure him, still breathing heavily. Before he can stop himself, his hand flies up to his face: feeling for the hard and familiar lines of his nose, the softness of his cheeks. All still there, he’s relieved to find – even if it does all feel a little singed. “I’m ok.”

“Like hell you are,” Bobby snaps angrily. “An’ you weren’t in there for more than a minute –”

“Leave it, Bobby.”

“No, I ain’t gonna just leave it! I ain’t gonna just stand here and watch you rip yourself apart because you’re too stubborn to admit that you’re in the wrong place _or_ that you need help!”

“I said _leave it,_ Bobby, this is happening! You can’t talk me out of it, so stop fucking trying.” Dean shakes his hand off and starts walking, counting. “…six, seven, and eight. It’s this one.” The shadow he gestures to looks no different from any of the others, but why would it be? It’s just one memory among hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. Except, of course, that it isn’t. He turns to Bobby, “Don’t suppose you’re gonna be any help and come along?” He tries to sound flippant, but can’t keep the tremor from his voice.

Bobby steps up to the portal, but his hand refuses to pass through. “Looks like I’ve done all I can,” he says sadly, shaking his head. “Is there anything I can say that’ll make you stop?”

“No,” as much as he wants there to be, Dean can’t see any other way forward. “I’m sorry Bobby. It was nice to see you again.”

“Good luck son, just,” Bobby pauses, “just try not to too lost in there: it happened, it ain’t happening.”

“What?”

But Bobby’s already vanished.

“Fucks’ sake!” Dean swears at the empty air. “Come back!”

Dean stands alone in the tunnel by himself –trying to think Bobby back into existence. For all his insistence that he had to do this alone, now that the time has come to actually do it, all he wants is the older man back to snip at him sarcastically from behind. No matter how hard he concentrates, however, Bobby stays gone. No way to go but forward it seems. 

Steeling himself, Dean steps through and into his memory.

At first, all there is is dark. Slowly, and one by one, his senses creep back in – the way they always had when whoever was in charge that day decided it was time for the fun to start again. Smell first, of course, and not a surprise: sulphur and blood and shit, mixing together into the familiar malaise. Then touch: the air begins to heat his skin, bringing up pinpricks of sweat – creeping in between the layers of his clothes, so that he has to resist the temptation to shrug out of his jacket. The ground begins to texture beneath his feet.

Sound next: no screams (for now) just the vague, distant, rusty groaning of chains, vaguely malevolent crunches and splashes as he walks over piles and puddles of things he can’t yet see. Same as always.

Finally, sight. There’s no particular light source, just a dim redness – like light on closed eyelids – that pics out the faint outline of a space that could maybe be a cave, or maybe a dungeon – though the edges are dissolving into smoke. The rack emerges from the darkness in long flowing lines, sketching itself into existence as he moves towards it. He knows it so intimately – every bump and grove, every crack in the leather. Throughout all his memories of hell it was one of the few constants, remaining even as the scenes and figures above or around him had shifted from one horror to another, slamming him back to reality on the rare occasions he was allowed to believe he had escaped. Even now he still dreams of it, and his skin itches against the sensation that he’s back.

But there _is_ someone strapped to it: slower to coalesce than the rack itself, yet still undeniably there. Dean knows it’s him, even though any identifying features are smeared with blood and shit and soot. Only the eyes are clearly visible: white, wide and rolling frantically in pain or in fear; there’s no way to tell. He appears to be struggling against something – mouth opening and closing, yet with no sound coming out.

“Hey,” Dean whispers to it. “Can you hear me?”

The him in the rack makes a small groan from the back of his throat, eyes squeezing shut. Dean decides this means yes.

“There was this spell…you probably already know. I’m looking for my ticket outta here, any ideas?”

“It’s nn…” his memory grunts and bucks in pain, the words descending into incoherency.

“What did you say? Where is it?” Instinctively, Dean steps closer, placing a hand on his shoulder and shaking gently. At the touch, the figure goes berserk, his eyes snapping open and meeting Dean’s – filled to the brim with pure fear.

“No!” He gasps out, his gaze slipping to somewhere over Dean’s shoulder. “Get away, not here. Go! _Go!_ ”

“Now why would you do that?” A horribly familiar voice creeps in from behind him. “You only just got here.”

Dean goes cold, there’s a hand on his shoulder: his hand. _His_ hand. He’s falling back, scrambling for the exit, he’s chained to the rack and Alistair is smiling fondly down at him – looking vaguely as he did when Sam had killed him, except for the holes in his flesh where black smoke is leaking out, and the white pools he has instead of eyes. He spots the pool of black he came in through, and his fingers reach out to touch it, before Alistair tugs something and his whole body spasms with pain as he fights against his bonds, sprawling on the floor. He tries again and again – and each time Alistair yanks him back to the past. The two realities flicker in and out of each other, but Alistair’s steady hand on his shoulder finally grounds him.

“It’s so nice to see you again, Dean,” Alistair croons. “The _real_ you, I mean. I do always love your visits, few and far between though they are.”

“No,” Dean’s voice is hoarse; as if he’s been screaming for hours – or days. Which he has. Hasn’t he?. He shakes his head, trying to remember. “This isn’t happening... it’s not real” he struggles against the bonds weakly, but Alistair's hands – almost tender – run through his hair, over his face, forcing him to still.

“Does it feel like it’s not happening?” he asks, neutrally, as if he’s talking about the weather.

“Just a…spell,” even as he says it, Dean feels the words slipping away. The rack beneath him is solid and familiar, recognizably real. He doesn’t understand what he just said, or why it feels like he just got here. He’d been somewhere before this, it feels like, but it’s all wrong – like a dream. The details don’t make sense. He’d been too old, too alive. Sam had been too tall, the hair too long. And Cas… Who was Cas?

Something waivers at the edge of his consciousness – a brief flash of blue, like the sky. He tries to focus on it, and the rack seems to fade away. Memories begin to flicker in front of his eyes – fast like stop motion. A hunt, a witch, Bobby – trying to tell him something. What had it been? What had he said?

“A spell?” he says again, trying it out.

“True,” Alistair concedes, and with the sound of his voice, everything else crashes away and Dean’s back to where he started, back to where he’s always been. “And boy this _is_ a nasty little spell. Full of knots. And you’ve managed to get yourself all tangled up with it,” he grins a grin with too many teeth.

Dean doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he nods – better to pretend than to risk any more pain than he’s already got coming for him. 

Alistair smiles knowingly, but nothing more. “Just how I’ve always preferred it,” he says. “I always do my best work when reality is more, hmm, relative.” Beside him, a razor materialises out of the mist, pushing at his hand impatiently. Alistair sighs. “Sadly, today is just a rerun – and I’m lagging behind. Got to stay on script. Still…” he takes the razor in his hand, brings it reverently to Dean’s chest. “… You can’t beat the classics.” He presses down and the blood wells up, a river flowing down Dean’s skin. “I’m sure you remember what I’m going to ask you?” he purrs into Dean’s ear.

“I won’t say it,” Dean hisses. “Ever.”

“That’s what you think, Deano,” Alistair grins. “It’s going to be an honour to break you. It always is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> validate me pls.


	4. Empty(?) Chairs(?) and Empty(?) Tables(?)

Sam and Cas are arguing over doors. Or, more accurately, they’re arguing over what’s behind the doors. The doors themselves are rather boring: they’re doors after all. Doors that resemble the doors Sam and Cas pass every day in the bunker. On the boring doors are long strings of numbers telling them the date and time contained behind each door – or so they assume, having yet to actually open any of the doors. These numbers are the only interesting parts of the doors. They aren’t in chronological order, and without knowing what’s behind them, it’s impossible to figure out why any door is in any particular place, or what part of Dean’s brain they’re in. The not-quite-Dean Dean leans casually on one of the boring doors, watching Sam and Cas argue with a wry smile on his face.

“The logical thing to do,” Cas is saying, “is to start chronologically and move forward.”

“We don’t have time,” Sam insists. “That’s nearly forty years’ worth of memories you’re talking about. We need to approach this strategically: start with the worst memories and work our way outwards.”

“And what would those be exactly? We aren’t Dean: we can’t know which memories he regards as the most painful – we probably aren’t even aware of the majority’s existence.”

“Then wouldn’t the _logical_ thing to do,” Dean interjects from the side, “be to ask Dean?”

“If he was here, we would,” Cas mutters darkly.

“Well I’m as close as you’re gonna get.”

“Or you could just take us to the _real_ Dean.”

“Why: don’t you like me?” Dean pretends to wipe away a tear. “I’m hurt Cas. After everything we’ve been through, you still don’t trust me.”

“I haven’t been through _anything_ with _you_ ,” Cas shoots back venomously. “And I wouldn’t trust you to –“

“Actually,” Sam cuts in, “you’re the best, uh, ‘person’ to ask about this. You know where it’s hidden, don’t you?”

Dean nods smugly. “Uh huh.”

“But you won’t tell us outright, will you?”

“Nuh uh,” Dean shakes his head.

“Why not?” Cas demands.

“It’s not in either of my natures,” Dean seems a little saddened by this. And a little pleased.

Cas opens his mouth to reply, seething, but Sam stops him with a warning look – they can’t afford to piss this ‘Dean’ off.

“What _will_ you tell us?” He asks, making sure to keep his voice level.

Dean considers. “I hid it in the dead centre of myself: the part of me where I begin and end,” he says eventually.

Sam and Cas confer over this. “It doesn’t tell us very much,” Cas sighs.

“He said ‘begins’, right?” Sam asks hopefully. “That could mean an early memory, like you said.”

“He also said ‘ends’,” Cas points out wearily. “Which would suggest a later memory. I think he meant it more…metaphorically – a memory that forms the basis of Dean’s self.”

“You mean: his conception of himself.”

“Exactly,” Cas says grimly.

“And Dean’s conception of himself is…”

“Something neither you nor I has ever been able to comprehend,” Cas sighs. “If the previous ten years are anything to go by.” The enormity of the task ahead of them weighs heavy on his shoulders – he’s tired and they haven’t even started yet.

“Is there anything _else_ you feel like telling us?” Sam snaps in Dean’s direction, forgetting his earlier warning to Cas.

Dean meets his eyes, and then looks away quickly. “The closer you get to the exit, the more pain you’ll cause me. And the more you see, the less you’ll care about that.”

Sam and Cas exchange disturbed looks, unable to tell if it’s the spell or Dean talking.

“You’re wrong,” Cas says, firmly.

Dean only shrugs. “We’ll see,” he says, gesturing over his shoulder. The door behind him slowly creaks open a few inches – and a soft light emanates from the other side. Along with it comes the faint sound of music, of people talking and the unmistakable smell of beer. “Let’s start with something easy, why don’t we? Get you two into the swing of things.”

“Where are we going?” Cas asks suspiciously.

Dean chuckles. “A good time.”

Cas looks at Sam, and they have a quick and silent conversation. He doesn’t think that this Dean wants to hurt them ( _‘yet’_ a dark part of his brain supplies) but that doesn’t mean he trusts him to keep them safe. At the same time, however, any movement (no matter the direction) is better than staying in this corridor, arguing about doors. Cas seems to have reached a similar conclusion, for he nods grimly. Uneasily, Sam steps forward, Cas close behind: the door is too narrow for them to walk side by side. Dean closes the door behind them and it vanishes.

Noise and light slam into being: the ground beneath them jolting as a hundred pairs of table legs and stools meet the hard, pitted wood of the floor that has just sprung into existence. Walls rise up in a smooth motion, joining with a smoke-stained ceiling that fills the space above them. Sam has to jump to one side as a low hanging lampshade drops down – it’s sickly yellow bulb flickering slightly. On the newly erected walls, windows, posters and dartboards emerge organically from the dirty paint – designs and numbers emerging, then melting into indecipherable smudges. On the windows, stained glass flowers grow and then shrink into diamonds and the fade into nothing before blooming again. Behind the glass, dirty orange streetlights flicker on and off.

The world snaps into place, and then sags slightly: bulging towards the middle. The light takes on a fuzzy, faintly green, hue: making everything look slightly unreal: like a reflection in an oil puddle. The scene begins to populate with strange and disturbing figures: men and women without faces, arms and legs unattached to bodies, fading to nothing at the edges. Near Cas’ shoulder, a man with no head bends towards a pair of floating hands, each of them clutching a beer. The loud, friendly roar of a bar fills their ears – sounds that almost become words rising above the general din before sinking back under, laughs and shouts echoing distantly off the walls. The whole room is slightly hazy and continues to undulate gently, making Sam faintly nauseous.

Sam searches for Dean (the Dean, a Dean, any Dean) but he seems to be lost in the collage of the crowd. Cas, standing at his elbow, frowns.

“Why does it look like this?” he asks. “And why is it moving?”

“I think Dean might’ve been drunk,” Sam replies, still looking around. It’s a bar, that much is certain, but it doesn’t look like any bar he’s ever been in. Parts of it – the cracked red leather of the seats, the old fashioned jukebox in the corner, a particularly grumpy bartender with a ridiculously long grey beard – are things he thinks he might remember: but from states, years and lives apart. “Hey, does any of this look familiar to you?”

Cas shakes his head.

“Me neither, so there’s no telling where this is.”

“Or when.”

Sam rubs a hand over his face, already exhausted by the wordplay. “Let’s just try find Dean.”

They don’t have to search long: pushing through the half-forgotten crowd (automatically murmuring apologies as they go) they find him slumped against an empty pool table, cue in hand: a goofy smile plastered over his face, a few beer stains darkening the fabric of his shirt. “Sssam, Cas,” he slurs happily, “S’good to see ya.” His gaze slips to behind them (where the other Dean has reappeared, a smug smile on its face) and manages (with some difficulty) to sharpen into a pointed glare. “Shame ‘bout the company.”

“Well ain’t I just the picture of mental health?” Spell Dean says sweetly. Both Deans look roughly the same age: though the alcohol has smoothed some of the lines from the memory’s skin.

“Go fuck myself…yourself,” Dean laughs loudly at his own joke.

“Dean,” Cas says urgently, “We’re trying to find our way out of here –”

“Huh?” Dean frowns in slurred confusion. “But you jusht got here,” he mumbles, lurching fully upright, clutching both hands around the pool cue and leaning against it heavily, eyes fixed on some point over their shoulders. “Haven’t seen you guyss in a while – ” he frowns “ – I think. Maybe you’re just in the can,” he looks at Cas, “Do angels shit?”

“Where are we?” Sam asks hastily, thinking an indirect path might be more effective.

“A bar.”

“ _Which_ bar?”

“Dunno. A bar, any bar, _the_ bar. S’all the same after a while,” Dean looks around, taking in the sickly shifting interior and accepts it with a small shrug. “Guesss this must be all of ‘em. Maybe I’m in heaven?” He laughs again until it turns into a hiccup, hands slipping further and further down the pool cue. 

“Dean,” Cas takes a step forward. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean murmurs vaguely, and they get the sense he would be waving his hand to wave away their concern if he could stand without the pool cue. He squints up at them like he’s trying to figure something out. “You guys look weird.”

“Weird how?” Sam asks, jumping at the first bit of actually useful information they’ve managed to glean. 

“Hair’s longer, tie’s different,” Dean makes a sad sound. “’m not real am I?”

“Not anymore,” Cas says gently. “You’re a memory now – we’re trying to find the real you.”

“Do you have any idea where you might be?” Sam asks.

Dean shrugs, the movement propelling him into a disembodied and headless torso, spilling it’s drink over a floating hand next to it. “Sorry,” he lurches back. “I dunno where I am, but –” he drops the pool cue and fumbles in his pockets, wrestling car keys from his jeans. “– I’ll help you look for me. Alwayss happy to help. C’mon, let’s get to the car.” He takes a lurching step, and Sam automatically jumps forward to support him – taking the familiar weight on his shoulder as he has a million times before and will do a million times again. 

“I don’t know if you should be driving,” he says, hand reaching automatically for the keys, forgetting (for a brief, happy moment) where they are.

“Already did, an’ I didn’t die did I? Did I?” Dean starts to laugh but suddenly becomes serious as he tries to catch either Sam or Cas’ eyes. “’M not dead am I Sammy? Cas? S’not some…soul quest thingy you guys are doin’ to bring me back?”

“No Dean, you’re not dead,” Cas says patiently.

“Not yet at least,” says the spell lightly – Cas glares at him and he raises his hands placatingly. “Not a threat – just a comment on the gradual nature of liver disease.”

“’K good,” Dean breathes an exaggerated sigh of relief. “’Cos, lemme tell ya, I don’t wanna go through that ag-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g –” his voice catches abruptly, repeating on a rapid loop – as if it’s playing on an old, scratched CD.

Startled, Sam stumbles back, but Dean remains frozen in place: still slumped as if leaning on a shoulder that’s no longer there, mouth opening and shutting with impossible speed. The bar around them is beginning to glitch and crack: the noise cutting to static, arms and tables shrinking, growing, changing colour and bumping into each other.

“Dean!” Sam calls, alarmed, but to no avail. Dean remains rooted to the spot, unable to even turn his head.

Cas rounds on the other Dean. “What have you done?” He snarls.

The other Dean smiles and spreads his hands. “ _I_ haven’t done anything: this is all on your Dean, and it looks like your Dean’s just gotten a little stuck.”

“Release him,” Cas demands, an angel blade suddenly appearing in his hands. “Now!”

“Now why would I do that?” Dean laughs, “I finally have him right where I want him.” Cas lunges with the blade, but it passes straight through, leaving only a faint puff of green smoke in its wake. Dean (both Deans) disappear: the frozen memory disintegrating into nothingness, the spell melting away.

With both of them gone the room begins to spin: faster and faster, a whirlwind of colour and noise. The semi-coherent shapes of the bar and the people begin to blur together into a sickly rainbow hurricane. It resembles the tunnel they’d been walking through before, except this time there’s no glass protecting them. Stuck in the rapidly shrinking eye, Sam yanks Cas closer and they huddle together as the floor beneath them begins to shake violently.

“Whatever you do, don’t let go!” Sam yells over the din, his hands gripping Cas’ trench coat so hard it’s painful. He feels Cas doing the same – squeezing his arm to let him know he’s heard.

Something beneath them lurches, and there’s a violent ripping sound as they’re thrown into the air. For a few brief, disorientating, seconds, they hang suspended in the cacophony of colour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the slightly slow update, will probs be like that for the next wee while as I am going camping.   
> also thanks for all the validation, it is majorly good for my soul


	5. Table for One

Then the world comes crashing in, again.

A few moments pass, in which time nothing really happens – except for the distant sound of an owl hooting, and the unmistakable feel of a breeze along Sam’s neck. Carefully, he and Cas straighten and let go of each other, glancing warily around. They’re outside now, on a long, deserted stretch of road, dimly illuminated by a weak moon and a few stars, with a dark forest of tree trunks on either side. There are no signs or billboards or anything identifiable – just a road. It, like the bar, is a scene so anonymously familiar that it could be anywhere – or anywhen.

A metallic click has them spinning around instantly. “Huh,” Dean (who had definitely not been there before, but has also clearly been here the whole time) says, sitting on the hood of the impala, lighting the cigarette in his mouth. “Your hair’s longer.”

He’s young – younger than Sam’s ever remembered him being – and (though his face is clouded with some unintelligible emotion: his eyes unusually bright, shoulders hunched against more than just the cold) there’s a lightness about him (in his posture which, even hunched, seems straighter; in his face, which is smooth and easy – quicker to smile than to frown) that Sam suddenly realises he’s been missing fiercely for years – ever since hell, ever since Dean had the weight of the world put on his shoulders. The years between this now (then) and their now have rarely seemed so heavy to Sam as when he looks at this younger version of his brother, and he can feel them pressing in on all sides – making a part of him just want to lie down and sleep forever. Dean stares at Sam and Sam stares at Dean, until Dean breaks the contact: bringing the cigarette to his lips, tilting his head back to watch the blueish smoke drift across the almost empty sky.

“You don’t smoke,” Sam blurts, awkwardly. It’s all he can think to say to this ghost.

Dean smiles upwards. “Not anymore, I guess.” He takes another drag. “I used to – when playing peacekeeper between you an’ Dad got too much. Didn’t you wonder where I’d go?” There’s an awkward silence that Sam doesn’t know how to fill. Dean tilts his head down slowly to catch his gaze before looking down, considering the cigarette in his hand. “But I guess ain’t got to do that no more,” he says, flicking the half-smoked cigarette into the trees, its faint red light swallowed by the damp darkness immediately, Dean watches him – he seems faintly amused. “No more peacekeeping, no more you. You just left, by the way. How’d Stanford go?”

“Oh,” Sam shifts his feet. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Dean says lightly, eyes flashing. “You weren’t then.”

“I – ”

“No,” Dean cuts him off flatly. “You weren’t. If I can ‘t lie here then neither can you.”

“I’m not lying,” Sam insists, feeling nineteen again. “It nearly killed me to go.”

“Then why leave?”

“Because it would’ve killed me to stay.”

“And what about me?” Dean snaps, the first time he’s let the emotions he’s clearly feeling into his voice. “What about this family?”

“I’m allowed to think of more than that, and you are too. We’re both our own people,” Sam says gently. It’s the same things he said back then, though it’s only now that it occurs to him how patronising he sounds.

Dean laughs hollowly. “Maybe you,” he says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll understand when you’re older.” Dean’s gaze shifts from Sam to Castiel, who’s watching the scene unfold with a deep sadness in his face. “I don’t know you yet, Cas. Mournin’ a man you never met?”

“Something like that,” Cas replies, perhaps a little hoarsely.

“Well, if you don’t hurry up, you’ll be missing a whole lot more than memories,” Dean says it casually, like he doesn’t really care.

“The real Dean?” Cas takes a step forward. “What’s happened to him?”

“I’m…stuck somewhere,” Dean frowns. “Dunno where exactly, but somewhere bad. And far away.”

“Can you tell us something, anything, more?”

Dean shakes his head. “If I get too close I’ll get stuck too.” He glances at something off stage, frowning slightly. “That other me’ll be here soon, you two should go.” He gestures to a tree, the trunk stretching and flattening into a door, which creaks slowly open – revealing an unrevealing darkness.

“How did you do that?” Cas asks.

“It’s still my head – for now at least. Comes with a few perks.”

“The spell told us the exit was in the ‘dead centre’ of you,” Sam says. “Is this it?”

Dean snorts. “You wish: I’m just a discarded habit from an old life. I’m barely scratching the surface.”

“Do you know where the exit is hidden?” Cas asks hopefully.

“I can see the path, but not the destination,” Deans says wryly, shaking his head. “That door should take you one step closer: and each me will be able to point you on,” he shrugs again. “Probably. I dunno how I know – bit of a plot hole really – but it sounds right, doesn’t it?”

“And the real you?”

“I should be somewhere along the way. I think I was heading in the right direction. Just not quite far enough...” Dean trails off.

“The spell, the one that looks like – ” Cas begins, but Dean interrupts.

“He’ll catch up eventually: just make sure you’re not going where _he_ wants you to go. Now hurry up and leave,” he lies back on the hood of the impala, “I got shit to do.”

Cas moves first, pulling the door fully open and stepping into the dark. Sam follows, but pauses on the threshold of the doorway. “What do you do next?” he asks, almost despite himself.

“Eh, who knows?” Dean shrugs. “Probably go drag Dad out from the bottom of whatever bottle he’s drownin’ in, then let myself get fucked stupid by some bartender,” He lies back against the hood of the impala, putting another cigarette back into his mouth, lighting it with shaking hands. “Or maybe I just wait here a while.”

“Wait for what?”

Dean smiles at him, tears streaming down his face. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to Sammy.”

Cas tugs at his arm insistently, and Sam lets himself be dragged from the memory, though he keeps his eyes trained on Dean’s silhouette, even as it fades into smoke and then into nothing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from the song with the same name by Courtney Marie Andrews:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDkUFzRRasA


	6. In the Middle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and thus she returneth.

Unlike the previous two scenes, a new reality does not immediately impose itself upon them. Instead, Sam and Cas are back to walking through nothing – though a distant, warm light is at least giving them something to aim for. They walk, in silence, both desperate to speak, but waiting for the other to go first. This is Sam’s more than his, Cas knows, yet without his grace suppressing the rawness of his emotions he’s finding it hard to hold everything back – and he can tell Sam wants to speak yet is too muddled to really start. Eventually, Sam figures it out.

“I never realised he used to leave.”

“Leave?”

“Yeah to y’know:” Sam mimes smoking – bringing two fingers up to his lips absentmindedly, considering. “After me n’Dad fought – after Dean talked us down – I’d go sulk. Dad would too – though of course, he wouldn’t call it that. He’d probably go drink and/or shoot something and I’d go cry and seethe and Dean would just…vanish. I never even thought about it until now. He was just always there until I wasn’t and I never thought to question it. It didn’t even occur to me that he was…that he needed…that he was more than just…” he trails off.

“You were very young,” is all Cas can think to offer (dimly wondering how angels have ever thought themselves competent at anything). “And if Dean wanted to hide something from you, then I don’t see how you could have noticed.”

Sam laughs, hollowly. “We practically lived on top of each other; in the same goddamn room half the time. You think I’d at least’ve smelt the smoke.”

“Sam…” Cas falters, unsure of what to say, knowing he has to try anyway. “It’s in the past, and there’s nothing you can do about it now,” is what he settles on, though even as the words are leaving his mouth he can tell they’re the wrong thing to say.

“He was _crying_ Cas,” Sam’s hands bunch into fists at his sides, his own eyes glittering dangerously. “And the way he looked at me – like I’d shot him or something. Destroyed his whole fucking world. You honestly think he still doesn’t feel any of that? _Dean_?”

“I’m sure he’s still hurt,” Cas concedes quickly, wondering if he should reach out to steady Sam’s shaking shoulders. He rests a hand there awkwardly and when nothing bad (or at least worse) seems to happen, he ploughs on. “But just because he’s still upset doesn’t mean that he still blames you. Remember, he never intended you see…all that – it was a vulnerable, private moment where everything was still fresh and raw. The way he saw things then will not be how he sees things now – with the virtue of hindsight and distance,” Cas pauses, and Sam nods, looking a little (though not much) better. Cas hopes it’s an appropriate time to voice his own feelings but he simply cannot ignore them any longer. “I must admit, it was…strange to see Dean like that,” he tries cautiously – and sighs in relief when Sam shoots him a wry smile in understanding.

“You mean so young?”

“And so…open.”

Sam hums in agreement. “I never really realised he was ever like that.”

“Humans will always be a mystery to me,” Cas muses, “and your brother is no exception: it turns out. I thought I knew him well, but really I only know a part of him. And such a small part. I had no idea that inside what I’ve seen he was so…big.” That’s not quite the right way to put it – and he gestures hopelessly at the space around him with the vague hope that it will convey the rest – that to be so surrounded by Dean is to somehow be so far from Dean. 

“Yeah,” Sam snorts. “You and me both. It’s funny. I’ve spent god knows how long trying to get Dean to talk about himself– to open up even a little bit. And now I’m literally inside his head; and one memory is almost too much for me.”

“And we have a long way to go, I think,”

“With no telling what we’ll see.”

“So we had best prepare ourselves for anything,” Cas nods grimly towards the now not so distant glow, which has revealed itself to be a bedside light clad in a soft pink lampshade; its comforting glow beginning to sketch a room around it. The gentle lines of a large double bed emerges, casting a soft shadow onto what are now walls. There are pillows all over the floor – other rumpled piles of cloth pooled between them. Sam spots a familiar shoe half concealed by an unfamiliar blue shirt, a knife and a gun lying carelessly on the floor beside them (unconsciously, Sam feels for his own weapons – somewhat comforted by their familiar feel, even if they probably won’t do much here). The rose light of the lamp is offset ever so slightly by the faint but harsh orange of a street light edging in through a chink in the curtains and landing on an exposed stretch of skin. Several exposed stretches of skin actually, all undulating gracefully in time with each other. 

Sam stares at the writhing mass of flesh and hands for a few seconds, then whirls around so fast he almost collides with Cas, who is squinting towards the bed in confusion.

“Turn around,” Sam hisses. “Now!”

“Wh – Oh,” in any other situation, Sam would’ve laughed himself sick at the sight of an angel blushing. Cas quickly turns from the scene, so that both of them are staring at the cream coloured wall, hung with elegant frames populated by faceless people and blurry landscapes that run into each other.

As if on cue, sound comes rushing in, and the room is filled with heavy breathing and groans that are impossible to mistake or ignore. Underneath it all, music is playing softly – too softly to make out any words underneath everything else that’s going on.

“We need to leave,” Sam says, searching in vain for the way they came in– but all his panicked eyes find is wall. “We must’ve come the wrong way. Is there a door on the other side of the room?”

“I don’t know,” Cas mutters back. “I didn’t see.”

“Well look and check.”

“Why do _I_ have to do it?”

“Because he’s my _brother_.”

“Exactly: you’ve seen him naked many more times than I have,” Cas says, sounding more like a petulant twelve year old than an ageless celestial being.

“That’s not the point!” Sam’s voices cracks into a shout, and they both wince and hold their breath. When the enthusiastic panting behind them continues unabated, Sam continues in a low whisper. “Look, Cas, you’ve been around humans long enough to know this is different. So just do both of us a favour and skip the obtuse angel act, turn around and check to see if there’s a fucking door so we can get out of here.”

Reluctantly, Cas twists his head round, then almost immediately brings it back to face the wall – it may just be the light, but his cheeks appear slightly pink. “There are no doors anywhere in this room,” he informs Sam, a little shortly. “Dean must not remember them – he is rather distracted after all and probably has other things on his mind.”

“The window,” Sam says instead of reacting to that statement the way he wants to, which would involve a lot of loud swearing and hand gestures that would attract too much attention to be worth risking right now. “Let’s try the window.”

They edge slowly towards it, both keeping their eyes resolutely trained on the wall in front of them, trying their best to ignore the increasingly loud moans from behind them. Sam’s brain is telling him a lot of important things he doesn’t want to know – like how the song currently playing is one Dean still likes to hum sometimes when he’s been driving for a long time, or that there were too many arms for two people – but he pushes it aside and concentrates on feeling for the curtain with his hand.

After what feels like an age, his hand brushes the soft fabric. He turns to face it, pulling the curtain aside, but the window stops after just a few inches of glass – fading back into the wall exactly where the curtain (once free to hang) begins. Through the glass he can see the faint outline of a quiet looking street – nice houses, cheap cars – though it too fades into nothing after half a block or so. “What the hell?”

“Dean must not have looked out the window,” Cas says. “So as far as this memory is concerned, the rest of the window and everything beyond what he saw outside it doesn’t exist – only the parts of the world that he interacted with have been replicated, nothing more, nothing less.”

“Well what are we supposed to do?”

“I suggest we wait for Dean to, um, finish and then ask him for directions,” Cas says, though from his tone he’s obviously more than a little flustered by his own suggestion.

Sam too deeply wants there to be another way out of this situation – but any further considerations would require him to turn around and take stock of the room more fully, something he is absolutely not prepared to do. Sighing, he turns so he can rest a shoulder on the wall where the window should be. Waiting it is. 

Fortunately (unfortunately) they don’t have to wait long. A longer series of deeply traumatising, unbearably happy moans, gasps and muffled cursing is followed by the sound of bodies crashing into a mattress. “Man,” comes Dean’s voice, between pants, “I can’t _tell_ you how much I needed that.”

There’s the unmistakeable sound of a hand slapping against skin (Sam doesn’t want to think which skin), followed by a low laugh that has Sam spinning, involuntarily, to gape at the large, tanned and bearded man currently dragging his hand over Dean’s thigh. The two men stare at each other with unconcealed lust in their eyes. “Hmmm…you _did_ seem a little worked up,” the man says.

“A _little_?” comes a familiar, feminine voice that somehow manages to shock Sam even more than he already is. A woman’s head appears and rests itself on Dean’s shoulder. There are a couple more wrinkles etched into her brown skin than the last time he saw her, but her curly hair is still completely black, her gaze still sharp. “There’s the understatement of the century. You had so many knots in your back I thought you were growing a new spine.”

“Holy shit,” Sam swears, unable to stop himself, before immediately wincing at the loudness of his voice – practically echoing and impossible to ignore in the soft quiet. Nobody on the bed – Dean, Cassie or the stranger – reacts to the sound, however: they all seem completely oblivious to the rest of the world. Dean laughs softly, and turns so he can kiss Cassie gently. The man behind them continues to stroke his hands up and down Dean’s body. 

“What is it?” Cas asks softly from beside him, now also facing the bed. “Do you recognise them?”

“That’s, that’s Cassie – one of Dean’s exes. One he told about our life.”

“When were they together?”

“While I was away at Stanford – that must be when we are.”

“No,” Cas points to Dean’s chest, where his anti-possession tattoo is clearly visible, “it’s more recent than that.”

Now that Sam can look at Dean without immediately wanting to look away again, he notices other details of time. This Dean is older than the one they just left, but younger than the one they’re looking for. He looks fairly healthy, except for the dark circles under his eyes and a slight pallor to his skin. The sunken, heavy look is back, even under his relaxed smile and easy posture – his shoulders sloping downwards and permanently hunched. Most tellingly, the handprint on his shoulder is still faintly visible – just beginning to edge from pink to white. Both Cassie and the Man touching avoid it, seemingly instinctually.

“This must’ve been during the apocalypse – the first one,” Sam says disbelievingly. “I had no idea Dean was still seeing her.”

“And the man?” Cas asks, neutrally, as if it’s the most normal question in the world.

The surprise of seeing Cassie has temporarily eclipsed any revelations around Dean’s sexuality, but Cas’ words bring them straight (heh) back to the fore. 

“I have no idea who he is,” Sam confesses. “I didn’t even know Dean was into uh…this kind of stuff.”

“You mean men?”

“Threesomes,” Sam corrects. “We don’t know if he’s into men. He might’ve just wanted Cassie and been willing to compromise.”

In front of them, Dean laughs softly as the man presses in close and whispers something in his ear. Sam catches Cas staring at him out of the corner of his eyes.

“We still don’t know for sure,” Sam insists. “He’s never said anything.”

“They don’t seem to be able to hear us,” Cas decides to say instead of answering. “I suggest we wait until Dean leaves and try to follow him.”

Sam nods, stepping back to lean against the wall again and wishing distantly that his phone worked in the astral plain (he had checked earlier, with vague ideas of just phoning Dean, but there had been no signal and when he’d tried to touch the screen his finger had sank in a little like it were quick sand, making him loathe to repeat the experiment.)

“Let’s get comfortable,” he tells Cas. “There’s no telling how long this will take.”

Cas hesitates, then comes and stands next to Sam – not quite relaxing, but not his normal poker straight either. He nudges something with his foot, then stoops to pick it up. It’s an old mobile phone – one that flips. 

“I remember this phone,” he says. “Dean used to call me on it.” As if on cue, the phone begins to beep in his hand. Surprised, Cas drops it to the floor – where it rolls instantly back into place. On the bed, Dean stiffens.

“Hmm…You’ve gone all tense,” The man says.

“I should probably get that,” Dean murmurs, though without much urgency. 

“Leave it,” Cassie says between kisses as the beeping trails off. “You can miss a call or two.”

The three of them fall back onto the bed. Dean runs one hand through Cassie’s hair, his other arm sprawled across the man’s chest. The harsh light of the street lamp flickers out, replaced by the tepid light of dawn, lurking just behind the curtain.

“How is it that you two always know exactly what I need?” Dean asks playfully, leaning back into the man’s touches.

“I guess we’re just geniuses,” Cassie replies.

“Or maybe it’s because whenever you show up you only have one thing on your mind,” interjects the man.

“I don’t just have _one_ thing on my mind.”

“Oh yeah?”

“No,” Dean insists. “I have two: you and Jonah.”

Jonah (as he’s apparently called) laughs – a deep hearty (undeniably masculine) laugh. “You’re just lucky I had the night off work.”

“Nah,” Dean smiles. “I know you never work Thursdays.”

“Hey now,” Jonah says in mock anger. “You been spying on me?”

“No, I’m just a genius.”

Cassie snorts. “Sure thing.”

“Speaking of work…” Dean says, but Jonah cuts him off with a gentle finger over his mouth.

“Nope, no shop talk right now, not in the bedroom. Besides, you know we’d tell you if any of your kind of crazy popped up here.”

“Nothin’ at all?” Dean sounds disappointed.

Cassie makes an amused noise. “If you wanna stay, just stay. You don’t need an excuse.”

“But Sam…”

“He won’t begrudge you a few days,” Cassie says. “Just tell him you’re with an old friend – it’s not even a lie. Not really.”

Dean’s mouth quirks up at that, and he even looks as if he’s considering her suggestion, but then the phone starts up again – its harsh ringtone shattering the gentle atmosphere – and face tightens with worry once more.

“I really need to get that,” Dean sits up, casting about for the phone.

“No you don’t,” Cassie insists. “Stay with us a little longer.”

“It’s probably Sam – wonderin’ where I am. He might have a new lead.”

“Let him wonder,” Jonah says. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“Yeah, it is,” Dean mutters as he lurches off the bed and snatches the phone off the ground.

“Wait, what –” Cassie begins to ask, but Dean’s already put his ear to the receiver and he waves her question off. Jonah, still regarding Dean sadly, vanishes from the scene – as do some of the clothes strewn about the floor.

“Heya Sammy,” Dean says, and his gaze snaps directly onto Sam’s, who jumps. “Nah, everything’s cool, I’m fine. I met this girl at a bar – blonde… think her name was Katie…or maybe Kathy. Carly? Whatever – that’s not the important part, the important part was the way she used her tongue to –” a faint noise of protest can be heard from the other side of the phone, and Dean smiles widely, still watching Sam. _Do you remember this?_ He seems to be asking silently. _How many times do you think I was here_? “You sure you don’t wanna know?” he says out loud. “Ah well, your loss Sammy, your loss.”

He listens to the noise on the other end of the phone.

“I’m about an hour or so away…just let me get my shit together and I’ll meet you at that diner we spotted... no I’m not gonna shower…well I don’t care if you don’t wanna smell it… If you get there first order me some pancakes…Seriously? You’re gonna order salad for breakfast? Yeah, fruit salad is still salad,” he shakes his head. “Whatever dude. See you soon, ok?” he snaps the phone shut, looks around and frowns. “Where’s Jonah?”

“He went out for a smoke,” Cassie tells him, coming to sit on the end of the bed beside him.

“Those things are bad for you,” Dean shakes his head, but his tone is light. “He’s a doctor. He should know better.”

Cassie shrugs. “We all need our ways to cope with the stress of it all – especially him,” she pauses, waiting for Dean to meet her eyes. “He worries about you, y’know. We both do.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean begins to gather his clothes, pulling a pair of boxers on. “I worry about me too sometimes.”

“You should stay longer sometime, or at least the night,” Cassie smiles slyly. “I know you miss my cooking. And Jonah could use some help with his car – not that he’ll ever admit it. I’m scared to go near the damn thing –it’s ‘bout fit to explode.”

Dean chuckles, sadly. “You know I’d love to – maybe once things out there calm down a bit I can stop by.”

“Dean,” Cassie hesitates, takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for a second, but continues. “What you said just then – is it…is it really the end?”

Dean pauses in buckling his belt, clearly trying to think of something to say. His silence is answer enough.

“No…”

“I’m sorry, Cassie. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh god,” Cassie whispers, her head dropping into her hands. 

“No point prayin’ to him,” Dean says bitterly, pulling a t-shirt on roughly over his head. “He ain’t gonna do jack fucking shit.”

“With everything that’s been happening the past year – all the disasters, all the death... we thought it was your type of thing but we didn’t think…” Cassie trails off – her body beginning to shake with suppressed sobs.

Dean sits back down beside her, taking her hands in his. “Cassie,” he says softly, “listen to me. Me n’Sam – we’re gonna stop it. It’s gonna be ok.”

“You and Sam? How?”

“We haven’t quite figured that bit out yet,” Dean admits, “but we’re gonna and we will – no matter what it takes.”

“Every time you leave I worry that you’re not gonna come back – that this will be the end for us and I won’t even know it,” Cassie buries her head on Dean’s shoulder. “But now…it might be end for all of us. Forever.”

“Hey,” Dean puts a hand under her chin and tilts her face towards his. “Do you trust me?”

Cassie nods.

“Well then trust me when I say that I’m always gonna come back.” They draw together for one last, long, lingering kiss, before Dean gets to his feet. “Right, well,” he holds his phone up in one hand, simultaneously beckoning for Sam and Cas to follow with the other. “Duty calls.”

A door appears in the wall in front of them, revealing a dimly lit hallway. As they follow Dean out Cassie, and the bedroom, begin to disintegrate. The walls go first, then the furniture and finally Cassie – who watches Dean all the while – her face resigned yet also slightly accusatory. Dean keeps his head forward as they move through the hallway, past smudged pictures of Cassie, Jonah, and faceless friends and family decorating the wall and down the stairs. Jonah himself stands in the hallway, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter clutched in his hand.

“Those things’ll kill you if you’re not careful,” Dean remarks casually.

“Do you want one?” Jonah asks, holding one out between his fingers.

Dean glances at Sam. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll take one for the road.”

Jonah places the cigarette behind Dean’s ear, strokes a hand through his hair. “I wish you could stay,” he regards Dean with a resigned expression. “But something’s happening isn’t it – something big?”

“Yeah,” Dean nods.

“And bad?”

“Yeah,” Dean admits and his voice cracks slightly. Immediately, Jonah embraces him, arms encircling him tightly. Dean brings his arms up and around, clutching onto Jonah tightly. It’s a moment so tender and intimate, that both Sam and Cas have to look away – even moreso than the earlier sex, watching this moment feels like the ultimate invasion of Dean’s privacy.

“Come back soon,” Jonah murmurs roughly into Dean’s shoulder.

“I’ll try.”

“That’s all we can ask of you. Take care.”

“You too.”

They part, and Dean leads Sam and Cas out through the front door. They step out, not into the street they’d glimpsed earlier or even the nothingness they’d come from, but back into the familiar bunker-like corridors lined with doors that are lined with dates.

“C’mon,” Dean says expressionlessly, “The next one is a bit of a walk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u all for the lovely comments and feedback, i promise i will reply to them very soon.   
> This chapter title is also the name of a v fun song by dodie which i'm like 80% sure is about having a threesome with your ex so i feel like it's relevant to this chapter.


	7. Hallway to Hell

“Could you hear us the entire time?” Sam demands as they start walking.

Cas is growing sick of all this walking – it’s something he’s had to get used to without his wings, and after spending so much time with the Winchesters, but at least in the real world walking tends to get you somewhere. These long treks through cheap green screen nothingness or through endless, repeating corridors are wearing thin.

“Yeah,” Dean smirks. “You weren’t exactly quiet.”

“Well neither were you,” Sam says then instantly turns red.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Cas asks, both to save Sam and because he genuinely wants to know the answer.

“It’s a nice memory – I didn’t wanna disrupt it.”

“Did you ever –” Cas begins to ask, but Dean cuts him off with a shake of his head.

“No, I’ve never been back.”

“Why not?” asks Sam.

Dean shrugs. “Things got pretty bad after that and –” he looks at Cas, meaningfully. “–pretty complicated too. There was the whole apocalypse thing to deal with, then you died and I was with Lisa. Then you were back but didn’t have a soul and then there were the leviathan and then I was in purgatory and then there were the trials and then there was the mark and then and then and then…” he trails off, eyes bright, and stops walking. “They probably figure I’m dead; and that’s probably easier at this point.”

“You miss them.” It’s not a question. Cas puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder – it’s a strange sensation, like he’s touching snow rather than flesh. Dean is just a little too cold, with just a little too much give, to be real. After a second, Cas’ hand begins to sink into the fabric of Dean’s jacket, and he pulls it back hurriedly.

“Yeah,” Dean wipes his face with the back of his hand and they start moving again.

“Why haven’t you ever told me?” Sam asks, as gently as he can (which isn’t all that gentle to Cas’ ears).

“What about: Jonah, Cassie or Jonah _and_ Cassie?” Dean hedges.

“Um…all three?”

“I guess…I guess, I like having somethings for myself…moments between everything else,” Dean hesitates, his face a mixture of embarrassment and something else. There’s clearly more he’s fighting hard not to say as he clenches his hands into fists at his sides. He looks so young, vulnerable and unguarded that, all at once, Cas is acutely aware that Sam is currently the older brother.

“And?” Sam prompts, oblivious to the effect he’s having.

“And I guess I’m scared,” Dean admits reluctantly, then ploughs on quickly before Sam can speak. “Look Sam, please don’t make me talk about this where I can’t lie.”

Sam opens his mouth to protest, but Cas beats him to it. “We won’t force you to talk about this or anything else Dean,” he assures him, squinting meaningfully in Sam’s direction. “ _Will we?”_

Sam’s shoulders slump slightly in defeat. “No, no: of course not. But will you at least tell me why you didn’t just stay the night?”

“Ah come on,” calls Dean’s voice from behind them, “don’t you know I always come when you call Sammy?”

“Great,” Dean rolls his eyes, slowing to a stop once more. “ _This_ asshole.”

The two Dean’s square off – one standing calmly with a sly smile on his face, the other tense and poised: a look of cold contempt twisting his features.

“Where have you been?” Cas asks the new (old) Dean cautiously, but he ignores him completely, staring intently at Sam.

“Have you noticed the pattern yet?” He asks, tantalisingly. “Been able to pick out the underlying theme?”

“What do you mean?” Sam asks, instantly taking the bait.

Inwardly, Cas groans, though it’s not as if it’s a surprise. If there’s one thing you can count on Winchesters to do, he reflects ruefully, it’s walk straight into a trap.

“Leave it Sam,” insists the old (young) Dean. “We’re nearly there.” He starts walking again, and Cas begins to follow. Sam and the other Dean, however, remain in place.

“Don’t play dumb with me Sammy,” Dean taunts. “I know you’ve noticed, even if you’re trying to tell yourself you haven’t. You’ve been the common thread so far haven’t you?”

“Shut up,” Sam says, but in that tone (the one he shares with Dean) he always uses when someone or something has hit a little too close to home. Dean’s smile only widens.

“I don’t know why you’re trying to deny it,” he spreads his hands in mock confusion. “You’ve never been shy to admit how bad I’ve been for you, so why do you ignore how bad you’ve been for me?”

“I said shut up!” Sam hisses again, but he makes no move to turn away – in fact he steps closer, glaring furiously (but ineffectively) at his (spell)brother.

“Two memories are hardly a pattern,” Cas snaps. In two steps he closes the distance between him and Sam, grasping his arm and trying to drag him away. Reduced to and inexperienced with human strength, however, he makes little headway, and Sam shakes him off easily.

“But Sam knows those two memories ain’t exactly exceptions – hell, they’re basically specimens,” Dean laughs. “Sammy’s always known what he is and what he does – haven’t you Sammy? Sucking the life out of my life, isn’t that right?” Sam visibly flinches and Dean laughs again. “What? Nothing to say in your defence?”

“Sam,” Cas whispers urgently. “ _Think._ You know he’s trying to manipulate you. You know he’s going to –”

“To what?” Dean interrupts. “Lie? You know I can’t do that in here.”

“Just because it’s not a lie doesn’t mean it’s true,” the younger Dean snaps from behind them – they all turn to stare, nonplussed, and he stammers to explain. “Uh…Just because I thought it once doesn’t mean I think it now, y’know?”

“But I have thought it haven’t we?” Dean points out. “Who knows how many times? And for how long? You ever wonder about that: Sam?”

Sam’s face is twisted – with rage or with pain or with both Cas can’t tell. His hands are bunched into fists so tight the knuckles have turned white, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t seem able to.

“Well you don’t got to wonder no more: I’ve got another one for ya. Specially made – just for you. Just so you can see exactly how I feel.” Next to Dean, the wall begins to stretch and thin, becoming transparent. “May I present,” Dean says with a flourish, “the window to my soul.”

The other Dean makes a noise. “That’s cheating.”

“You know what they say,” Dean shrugs. “All’s fair. And this is both.”

Sam approaches the window and Cas, against all his better judgement, follows.

“This is what he wants,” Dean warns. “He’s tryna distract you and trap you and it’s _fucking working_.”

“Ah c’mon, when has a Winchester _not_ walked knowingly into a trap?” Dean winks at Cas and throws an arm around his own shoulders. “It’s good drama my young self, so sit back and enjoy the show.”

Through the window, Cas can see the silhouettes of two figures, a car, and a cemetery. He recognises it at once, of course. How could he not? As the scene brightens, he picks out details he already knew were coming: the scorched ground where Michael had stood, the bloodstained grass, the cracked windshield, Bobby’s corpse in the grass with his neck twisted at a gruesomely impossible angle: cap and gun on the ground next to him. Some of the blood and viscera splattering the scene (including Dean), he realises with an unpleasant lurch to his stomach, is him. Never more aware of his own materiality than in this moment, he shifts his feet – reminding himself that he is still solid, still here, and not there on the grass, intermingling with Dean’s sorrow and pain. Not literally, at least.

Dean is slumped on the ground, face mutilated and bloody (his own and Cas’). Lucifer (Sam) is standing over him, face a stone statue carved with an evil smirk. 

“What’s this got to do with anything?” Sam demands, “I wasn’t even there for most of it. Neither of us was.”

“Shhh,” is all Dean says. “It’s about to start.”

Sam’s hands grab Dean by the collar and throw him against the car, Cas can hear the snap of bones, the anguished gasp torn from Dean’s lips. Lucifer draws Sam’s fist back, and Dean grasps for his wrist desperately, futilely. 

“Sammy,” he says. Then, confusingly, “If the situation was reversed, and I was dying – ” his voice is lower, rougher but also clearer – not the broken rasp that all that swelling and blood should be producing.

“Huh?” says real Sam, and the Sam in front of them freezes mid-swing – as if someone hit the pause button on the remote. “This isn’t how this happened. This is from – ”

“From later, yeah – ” says Dean. He catches Cas’ confused glance, and an ugly expression steals over his face – like he’s a cat who’s happened upon a particularly stupid baby mouse. “So Sam never told you either?”

“Told me what?”

“Do you wanna do it?” Dean asks Sam. “Or should I?”

“How about neither of you does it and we just move the fuck on?” Interjects the other Dean from the side, but even Cas ignores him now – every ounce of his (considerable) focus now trained on Sam.

“Tell me _what_ Sam? When is this –” he nods at the frozen scene “ – from?”

Sam shakes his head, and Cas all but stomps his foot with impatience.

“Would you rather _he_ – ” Cas gestures to the older Dean, “ – told me?”

Sam shakes his head. “No, god no. I’ll do it it’s just…give me a sec,” Sam pauses, gathers his thoughts and, with a visible effort, speaks. “You know when we were um…well, after Gadreel – y’know?”

“Yes.”

“Things were bad,” Sam admits, “worse than we let on. And I, uh, I said some things I regret. Now.”

“Like what?” Cas can feel a faint suspicion forming at the edge of his mind, but he ignores it – wanting to hear it from Sam.

But Sam just waves towards the cemetery in front of them. “You’ll see,” is all he says.

As if on cue, the scene jumps to life once again.

“…if I was dying, you’d do the same thing.”

“No Dean, I wouldn’t,” says memory Sam, at the same time as he swings his fist into Dean’s face. The words continue to echo as he punches Dean again and again and again and again and again and again and again...

Cas can’t help but wince.

“Not my finest moment,” Sam agrees.

“You had every right to be upset.” 

“Yeah, but I still said that more to hurt Dean than anything else. Even at the time, I knew I didn’t really mean it – and I thought Dean knew that too.”

“I do,” Dean (the other Dean) insists, voice strained. “But there’s knowing and _knowing_ , y’know?”

“And feeling,” the other Dean breaks in, smugly. “This is how it made me _feel_ – like I was being beat half to death by the fuckin’ devil himself. Thanks for that Sammy. On both counts I mean.”

“Shut up,” Dean snarls, rounding on himself. “Before I make you.”

Dean snorts incredulously, unconcerned. “Hah! I’d like to see you try,” he raises a critical eyebrow. “Who exactly are you anyway? My pitiful attempt at normalcy and happiness? Some sappy dream of an apple pie future I’ll never have and never could have?” He surges forwards, until they’re practically nose to nose. “You’re weak, and you know it. You couldn’t even make me sneeze, and you know it.”

“Sammy,” Dean says, but it’s not either of the Deans currently squaring off. The four of them (two Deans, two not Deans) spin in surprise to find the other Dean limping up to the window. He doesn’t seem to be able to see them properly – his bruised and swollen eyes are fixed somewhere between Cas and Sam – but his face is determined. Slowly, with obvious difficulty, he raises his hand and wipes some of the blood away from his mouth, so that when he smiles it doesn’t look so monstrous. “Sam,” he says again, placing his hand on the ‘glass’ between them. It slides slightly, leaving a red smear.

“Dean,” Sam stumbles forward, putting his own hand where Dean’s is. “Can you hear me? Dean, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Proud of you, Sammy,” Dean says, though it’s still unclear if he heard. “Both times…was proud. Always proud.” It’s clear the words cost him a great deal, and his body is tense with the effort. “Worth it…always worth it,” he gets out between pained breaths.

“How are you doing that?” Dean (the spell Dean) demands, his eyes flashing the not-quite-dean-green. The wall in front of them darkens, Dean and the graveyard fading into shadows with it. Sam lets his hand drop.

Dean (the other Dean) shrugs and smiles slyly. “Hey, you’re not the only me that cheats. You know what they say: all’s fair in love and war.”

“You shouldn’t be able to do this,” Dean insists angrily. “It’s not possible.”

“Have you been watching a different show?” Dean taunts, “When have we ever cared about what’s possible? You think you’re so powerful but you know what? You’re just some dumb spell, and you’re already losing your grip on me, ain’t ya? Guess I’m just too much to handle.”

“Oh don’t you worry about my grip, buddy,” Dean hisses. “It’s tight: _real_ tight.”

“Both of you: _Enough,”_ Cas groans, exasperated: Dean’s terrible trash talk and innuendos are bad enough when there’s only one of him.

“Just take us to the next memory,” Sam says.

“Oh you really think you’ll be able to handle it?”

“Yes,” Cas says firmly. “You tried to distract us and it didn’t work. Dean, the real Dean, is fighting you even from wherever you think you’ve trapped him.”

“Well if it’s a fight you want…” Dean smiles ominously, and then vanishes.

“That’s…probably not good,” Sam sighs, turning to the remaining Dean, who shakes his head.

“You two are gonna have to move a lot faster,” he says grimly. “I didn’t like the look on my face.”

“Are we close to the next one?”

Dean nods. “It’s not much further,” he says, turning away and starting down the corridor once more. “Follow me.”

They walk in silence, Sam watches Dean, Cas watches Sam watching Dean and Dean watches the floor. The doors they pass are all the same, except for the dates – which don’t appear to be in any sort of discernible order. Dean obviously knows exactly where they’re going, however, for he never even glances to either side. Cas, more to pass the time than anything else, tries to see if he can match any specific strings of numbers to any particular events or memories, but few are even remotely familiar to him – as an angel he’d never needed to pay much attention to the ridiculously small increments humans bisect their time with, and even now he tends to class the world along the calendars of crisis that defines most of the Winchesters’ existence rather than by days, months or years.

“This is it.” Dean stops abruptly, and Cas, distracted, nearly walks into him.

“When is it?” he asks.

Dean gestures to the date on the door: _08/12/1994_. Cas looks to Sam, who frowns.

“It doesn’t ring a bell,” he admits. “I guess I was about 11?”

“Are you going to tell us anything?” Cas asks Dean.

Dean shakes his head, smiling sadly. “You’re gonna see in a second anyway just…” he hesitates, looking at Sam. “...just remember what I said – no matter what, it’s always worth it.” He pushes the door open, and garish sunlight begins to spill out. As it touches his hands and feet they begin to dissolve. “Guess this is it for me,” he smiles, his voice tinged with both regret and relief. “It was good to see you – both of you. Here’s hoping we never meet again.” Then he’s gone.

Steeling himself, Cas steps over the threshold, Sam one step behind him.


	8. Interlude: Pre-Commercial Cliffhanger

Pain. All there is is Pain. Pain and blood. Enough to drown in, except that he’s learned how to breathe in it. Pain and blood and Alistair. Alistair crooning above him, sawing with a tenderness so paradoxical it’s enough to make Dean laugh – or try to laugh. All that comes out is a sob. A sob and some blood.

“Shhhh, Dean,” Alistair soothes him absently. “Save that pretty voice of yours for something much more important – that ‘yes’ I just know you’re dying to give me.”

A piece of him (that piece Alistair slicing) is crying out: begging for him to break, to let the pain and blood stop. For everything to stop. It’s larger and it’s louder than it was before. He forces it down, somehow.

“N-Never,” he chokes out.

“Ah but of course,” Alistair seems unconcerned. “It’s early days yet. I know you don’t remember that you remember this – but we have so much fun still to come. Don’t worry.”

“Is there any way you can, I dunno, speed it up a bit?” He asks Alistair. Except it’s not him asking – he’s still on the rack. Yet he’s also peering over Alistair’s shoulder at himself, curious and satisfied at the sight of himself so close to breaking. “They’re getting closer.”

Hope and fear, only to be cut short by a particularly deep slice. Pain again. Blood again. 

“You can’t rush good Television,” Alistair chides him gently, absently pulling at one of his finger nails: dragging it slowly from its bed. “Not without messing up the pacing. Now,” he smiles slyly, “if you were allow me to…improvise, to go off script, so to speak, I could break you in seconds.”

His eyes (not his eyes, _his_ eyes) flash a strange green for a second. He sees it. He feels it. He sees it and he feels it. “And give you even more sentience than you have now? I don’t think so.”

Alistair shrugs, seemingly disappointed but not surprised. “It was worth a shot,” he says. “But alas, even when you’re this corrupted you fear me too much. Proof of a job well done, I suppose. Perhaps too well done?” Neither of him says anything, and Alistair smiles widely. “Well, if I’m too, ah, extreme for your taste, may I suggest the next best thing? I can’t guarantee you the same results, of course, but I’m sure you’ll have more than enough to work with.”

“Alright, you’ve got me interested: What is it?” Dean asks, heart beating with fear and anticipation, excitement and pain. 

Alistair gestures to Dean on the rack. “My handiwork,” he says. “Well, mine and an old friend’s.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapters in one today because this one is super short.


	9. The Florida Project

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hav u watched the Florida Project? U should watch the Florida Project

In the bright sunlight it takes Cas a second to orient himself. Even before his vision has cleared, his nose is inundated with a harsh, chlorinated tang – strong enough to make him cough. In the background, he can hear a faint splashing underneath the sounds of passing cars. As his eyes finally begin to pick out details from the colourful shapes around him, he realises he’s standing in a swimming pool.

Sam, coming to a similar realisation next to him, jerks instinctually. But the water doesn’t splash and neither of them are even damp: the water simply moves through them like they’re standing in a hologram. Cas accepts this without much thought (after everything else that’s happened and is happening and probably will happen, non-wet swimming pools are the least of it). Instead, of course, he casts about for Dean.

His eyes pass over him several times. He knows Dean down to his very molecules, having rebuilt him from them more times than he cares to count. He knows, in minute detail, the particularities of Dean’s cells, of his chemical imbalances and atomic distribution as well as the ways they have shifted with time. And, in the decade or so since meeting him, Cas has become aware of ageing in the real sense, rather than the abstract cosmic blinks that humans had once been contained within. He’s watched the Dean he rescued from hell (a Dean he has only now begun to think of as young) shift and reform into the Dean he knows today – a process at once sudden and slow, obvious and unnoticeable. Despite this, supposedly extensive, knowledge of Dean both past and present, it takes him a while to associate the stocky, pale, teenager stretched out on a sun lounger with the man he’s searching for. There’s nobody else here, however, and the longer he looks the more he can see the origins of his Dean in this younger Dean’s face.

Dean’s eyes are closed, lips drooping lazily. His white chest – already littered with scars and bruises, including a nasty yellow stain spreading over his ribs – rises and falls slowly. One arm dangles idly off the plastic lounger, fingers resting in a loose fist on the ground. A book, the cover and title nothing but a dull smudge of colour, lies next to him, shimmering slightly in heat haze rising from the concrete. The pool and lounger is enclosed by a white ring of plastic fencing, and though there are other chairs, and cars in a distant parking lot, the scene is otherwise empty.

Looming large behind him, a large, startlingly pink motel block is an eye watering contrast with the blue, cloudless sky. It’s such a perfect rectangle, with the smaller glass and wood rectangles of windows and doors occurring at such perfectly regular intervals, that Cas has to blink at it a couple of times just to make sure it’s really real and really that pink. It’s a far cry from anything he’s ever associated Dean with. He glances at Sam, and is surprised to find the other Winchester smiling.

“I remember this place,” He says. “Dad dumped us here for a whole summer once. It was probably the only time we were in a motel with a decent pool when the weather was actually good.”

“Was it really this…pink?” Cas is finding it hard to look away.

Sam laughs, and the sound lifts Cas spirits in a way he hadn’t known he’d needed. “No, it wasn’t quite this bad. But Dean hated it – the pink I mean, he loved the pool – so it’s probably what he remembers the most strongly. Dad was on some hunt most of the time, so it was just me, Dean and the other motel kids,” He smiles softly at his sleeping brother. “It was a good summer.”

“Meaning,” Cas mutters with a melancholic clarity, “That something is probably about to go wrong.”

He’s barely finished speaking when the sunlight goes out.

The sun itself is still there (burning fiercely white) and the sky is still a pure and overwhelming blue, but the pool, the loungers and Dean are plunged into shadow with no obvious source. A wave of cold has Cas involuntarily pulling his coat closer around him (an instinct he hasn’t needed since his brief stint as human). In front of them, Dean shifts uncomfortably: eyes slowly, reluctantly, fluttering open. Above him, the figure of John Winchester flickers in and out of existence – in time with the blinks. He looks road and hunt worn – clothing rumpled, beard unshaven, hair dishevelled, and there’s a faint scratch on his cheekbone (though he’s otherwise unharmed). His eyes, once he finally solidifies, are hard as flint.

“What,” he asks in a slow, even, tone that has Sam tensing on pure instinct alone, “the _hell_ are you doing?”

Dean blinks blearily up at his father. “Huh?”

John leans closer. “I _said:_ what the hell are you doing, _boy_?” He hurls the last word at his son as if it’s an insult, rather than a simple observation.

Dean’s eyes droop closed again as he mumbles: “’M...sleepin’.”

The answer, though truthful, seems to displease John – judging by the way Sam groans softly from beside Cas. Although Castiel has never met this form of the older Winchester, he looms large in both Dean and Sam. Cas can pick out details – of expression, of stance – that his sons have inherited. The slight curl to John’s mouth is his only outward show of emotion, but it’s the exact same curl Dean has when some monster he’s been hunting is begging for mercy, which is enough to set Cas instantly on edge.

“Where is your brother?” John raises his voice, forcing Dean to focus on him once again.

“Sam?” Dean props himself onto his elbows and looks around, confused and still half asleep. “…here earlier.” Seeing the otherwise empty pool area, he shrugs. “Must’ve gone off with some kids.”

“So you’re telling me you don’t know where he is?” John’s voice is ice cold, the words echo slightly, and it seems to snap Dean into awareness, so that now, when he looks up at John from his (vulnerable) position, his gaze is wary.

“No, Sir.” He says carefully.

“So you do know where he is?”

“No, Sir.”

“Well, which is it Dean?” John barks. Both Dean and Sam flinch.

“He was playin’ in the pool with some other kids from the motel. He’s probably just with them.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“Well…no”

“So don’t know where Sam is?” John crosses his arms.

Dean’s gaze slides to the floor, and his jaw tenses as if he wants to speak, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Answer me!”

“No Sir, I don’t know where Sam is,” Dean replies in a clipped voice.

John makes a noise of disgust, running a hand through his messy hair and glaring at his eldest son. “I gave you one job Dean, _one_ job. You remember what it was?”

Dean nods.

“Tell me.”

“Keep Sammy safe,” Dean intones, still not looking at John.

“Well, clearly you were listening: at least we know _that’s_ not the problem,” John says sarcastically. “Which means you’re either too stupid or too incompetent to do the one thing I expect of you – which is it?”

Cas feels his heart twist at the cruelty of John’s words – the needless and borderline sadistic power play – and at the sullen slump of Dean’s shoulders under the onslaught. He doesn’t answer the question, but continues to stare at the ground.

“I asked you a question _boy_ ,” John hisses. “Which are you: stupid or incompetent? And look me in the eye like the man you aren’t when you answer – that’s an order.”

Dean jerks his head upwards, but when his eyes meet John’s, Cas is taken aback at the sight of an all too familiar glint in them. “Neither,” he states, voice steady. 

Both Sam and John stiffen in surprise. “Excuse me?” John says.

Dean sits up, glowering up at his father. “I’ve been taking care of Sam for _weeks_. He’s safe, happy and well fed – no thanks to you by the way that money you left us ran out days ago. He’s made friends and he’s had fun, and no one’s been hurt or hungry and no one’s asked any questions. So you know what? On the whole, I’d say I’ve done a pretty decent job,” he points defiantly at John, “an’ more than _you_ have at least.”

“Holy shit,” Sam breathes, in awe.

Even a blind man, Cas thinks, would be able to see how angry John is now. He’s radiating a cold fury that would make even an archangel take a step back, yet Dean stands his ground, meeting John’s eyes with a steely determination of his own.

“I’m gonna give you one more chance,” John says quietly, a threat evident in every syllable, “to rethink what you just said. You got anything else you’d like to say to me?”

“No, _Sir_ ,” Dean somehow manages to infuse the word ‘sir’ with enough sarcasm to make it sound insulting. “I stand by it. So I don’t know exactly where Sam is right now – _big fuckin’ deal._ The kid’s eleven; he can take care of himself for a while: god knows the dork needs friends his own age, and god knows I deserve some time to myself.”

There’s a flicker of movement, and Dean is wrenched upwards by John’s hand clutched bruisingly tight around his arm. His feet scramble desperately for purchase on the ground, John the only thing keeping him upright. “You think you know better than me?” He’s pulled Dean close to his face so he can whisper – but Cas can hear him as clearly as if he were in Dean’s position. “You think you can question _my_ orders.” He shakes Dean roughly. “Answer me!”

“No…” Dean grunts. “Let go – you’re _hurting_ me.”

But John refuses to relent, and instead of stepping he steps forward, forcing Dean into an even more precarious position than before: his legs squashed awkwardly against the lounger. Sam, with a look of pure rage eerily similar to his father’s, springs out of the pool and tries to pry John’s hand off. His fingers pass straight through, however, and neither John nor Dean appears to notice his efforts. He shoots Cas a worried look which Cas returns with one of his own. They’d been able to touch Dean in his other memories – the non-wet swimming pool is abruptly a bigger problem.

“Did you ever stop to think,” John continues, “how it might look – an eleven year old boy running round a motel on his own or with some random group of kids? What if someone became suspicious: called CPS? What would you’ve done then?”

Dean, amazingly, foolishly, laughs. “That’s all you’ve got?” he asks incredulously. “It might look suspicious? It’s _summer,_ Dad, this place is crawling with kids on vacation. Which,” he adds venomously, “ends next week. You gonna enrol us in school on time this year? Or are you gonna be too busy with some fucking skinwalker like last time?” He smirks again at the look on John’s face. “Anything else you wanna rail me for while you’ve got me here?”

“You watch your tone with me boy, I’m your father and you owe me–”

“Then fucking act like it!” Dean explodes. “You wanna keep Sam safe then _you_ make sure there’s enough food in the fridge. _You_ make it so that the room is paid for through the end of the week and that he’s got enough to do that he won’t just run away. I’ve been doin’ all that and more since I was his age or younger! What makes us so different that you’d leave me alone with him then, but don’t trust him to take care of himself now?”

There is a drawn out, tense, cold second where all sounds except for Dean’s heavy breathing recede. The world around them darkens even further, the entire focus of the memory shrinking to John’s livid face – which remains lit and luridly coloured.

The moment ends when John releases Dean’s arm – letting him drop onto the hard concrete. Dean gasps in pain as he makes contact, the back of his head bouncing off the recently re-existent plastic lounger. John follows him, looming even larger over Dean’s prone figure, feet on either side of his hips. Sam, futilely, tries to get between them – but John simply walks through him, stopping at Dean’s shoulders – one boot resting on Dean’s chest. From his pinned position on the ground, Dean continues to glare at John. “Oh yeah this isn’t suspicious _at all_ ,” he spits, and Cas (as usual) isn’t sure whether to cheer or groan at his forced bravado in the face of the enemy, his inability to let things lie. “Grown man standing above a teenage boy in swim trunks – nobody’s gonna think _anything_ of that.”

“You think I’m not keeping Sam safe?” John asks, ignoring Dean’s words, pressing down on his chest until Dean is grimacing in pain. “You think you know even a fraction of what I do to protect you boys? What I’ve sacrificed so your worthless ass could mouth off at me? Do you know how many times I’ve had to cover you? Do both our jobs so you could go off and play video games or nap in the sun? That _thing_ that killed your mother is still out there – you want Sammy to end up like her? Burning to ash on the ceiling because you couldn’t be bothered to follow the one goddamn order I gave you? Because you couldn’t do the one goddamn thing I trained you for?”

Behind him, Mary Winchester’s burning body, her mouth open in a terrible but silent scream, flashes into Dean’s consciousness. The smell of smoke overpowers the chlorine as she hangs, horribly, in the air behind John – clearly an invention of Dean’s imagination, but vividly real nonetheless. Visibly, Dean flinches, and John smiles grimly, victoriously, at the sight of his son’s distress.

“Yeah that’s what I thought,” he says nastily, pressing down with his boot until Dean can’t help but gasp. “So, I’ll ask one more time. Do you know where Sam is?”

“No Sir,” Dean’s voice is small.

“And do you think you’ve done a good job keeping him safe?”

“No Sir.”

“You gonna question my orders again?”

“No Sir.”

“Alright then,” John steps back, Mary vanishes, and the sun, sky and pink motel make their eye-watering reappearances. “You’re gonna go find your brother, pack your shit and be ready to leave in half an hour. You got that?”

“Yes Sir.”

Dean climbs warily to his feet, but John makes no further moves towards him, just watches him contemptuously for a moment, his eyes sliding down to the imprint of his shoe – overlaid on the existing bruise on Dean’s ribcage. “Put a shirt on first,” he says before turning and walking towards (Cas assumes) the impala.

Dean watches him go, rubbing his arm. Only once John has disappeared from sight (and existence) does Dean seem to see them – though his only acknowledgement is a quick jerk of his head.

“Well come on then,” he says shortly, still watching the place where John vanished. “We all got places to be.”

“Dean I’m sorry,” Sam says immediately.

“What for?” Dean’s voice is carefully guarded. “Not like you could’ve done anything.”

Sam reaches out to brush the bruise already forming on Dean’s arm, but, as before, he simply passes straight through. Dean draws back, as if burned.

“You guys are taking too long,” he says angrily.

“Where _are_ you Dean?” Cas asks, climbing out the pool to stand next to Sam.

“I told you already _I don’t know_ ,” Dean snaps. “And if I look too close I’ll get stuck just like before. You guys need to find me – and not try to have a heart to heart after every little piece of angst. C’mon,” he jerks away from them, walking towards the large pink building.

Sam and Cas scramble to follow him. “Did Dad…hurt you often?” Sam asks, rage tinting the edge of his voice. “Like that?”

“Yeah,” Dean says shortly. Then, seeing the look on Sam’s face: “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t look at me like I’m some kind of victim – I know that’s what you think of me.”

“That’s not…” Sam trails off **.**

“You’re thinking what you’ve always thought. What you _like_ to think,” Dean lowers his voice in a sarcastic mockery of his brother’s: “‘Poor Dean, forced to follow Dad’s orders until he became the perfect little soldier, too scared to think or talk back or stand up for himself, always sacrificing, always suffering. He never even had the _chance_ at a normal life, doesn’t know what he’s missed out on’,” Dean takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Well that’s not true, ok? I know how to defend myself and what I love – I wasn’t afraid to stand up to him when it really counted, to stand up for you. And I wasn’t afraid to make my other life – even if it was only in the in-betweens. I just decided one was more important, just like you have,” Dean points at Sam, eyes flashing. “It was _my_ job to keep you safe and I did, even from him. It’s _my_ job to keep this family together and I _do_ , even when you two’ve tried to rip it apart. I know my path and I’ve chosen to follow it no matter what, so you don’t _get_ to look at me like that and pity me like that.”

By this point they’ve reached the motel which is, of course, lined with doors. One of the doors, the one Dean is leading them to, has a date instead of a room number: 02 _/18/2016_. Dean regards it for a second, before spinning, abruptly towards Cas, an unconvincingly cruel smile plastered haphazardly on his face. “And I bet you’re just loving this _Castiel,”_ he spits out Cas’ full name like it’s poison. “Standing calmly to the side this whole time. All these memories have been about Sam so far haven’t they? Must be interesting for you: getting a front-row seat to our goddamn family melodrama.”

“You know I’m not ‘loving it’,” Cas says, unsure of the correct way to proceed. Dean is like a live wire – liable to spark at any moment. “But we need to do this in order to save you – and to get out of here.”

“Yeah well,” Dean pushes the door open, gesturing them over the threshold. “Maybe it’s time to explore a different relationship? Give someone else some screen time? You’ll break my goddamn heart – I hope you’re happy.”

Before either of them can react, he slams the door in the faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i recently remade tumblr, so come chat to me there if ur enjoying this fic. it's: https://fanficanthropologist.tumblr.com/


	10. That Moment We've all Been Waiting For?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pls heed that some of the warnings have changed, there's a spoliery trigger warning in the end notes xx

“Cas what the hell is he talking about?” Sam rounds on the angel immediately. 

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know if you’ve broken my brother’s heart?”

“Well I suppose we’re about to find out aren’t we?” Cas’ face is a mess of emotions. Abruptly, Sam remembers his constrained grace – anything Cas is feeling now is amplified well above what he’s used to. He looks distressed, scared and anxious – and Sam can’t help but empathise, as well as feel guiltily relieved that someone else is (at last) the focus of Dean’s psyche.

In the time of their short exchange, another stretch of anonymous highway has crept in around them. It’s been raining, the tarmac is dimly reflective – a thousand tiny puddles from between the cracks weakly reproducing the stars above them. The impala is there – also wet, though Dean looks mostly dry. Like the last time, he’s sitting on the hood of the car, eyes open and watching them, a pack of cigarettes unopened by his hand. This time, however, he’s older, much older, close to the age he is now. When they notice him looking, he sighs. “I really didn’t want you to ever see this,” he tells them morosely, putting an unlit cigarette to his lips.

“Do you know where the door is?” Sam tries hopefully, “You could take us there before…” he trails off because Dean is ignoring him, looking at Cas like he’s the only thing in the world. 

“Why did you say yes?” He asks, voice flat, and his eyes turn towards the sky. “Why?”

Cas’ sharp intake of breath is lost in the sound of flapping wings, and Cas (another Cas) appears on the ground in front of them – trench coat rumpled and stained, face bloodstained and twisted in pain. He looks like he’s been in a fight, and a bad one at that. Dean jumps to his feet, cigarette dropping to the ground, instinctually starting forwards, before something kicks in and he stops well out of reach, keeping his distance.

“Cas?” he asks warily. “That you?”

In the pool of the impala’s headlights, they watch Cas shift onto his knees, groaning as he does so and clutching his arms tightly around himself. He wavers for a second, before pitching forward until his forehead is resting on the hard concrete. “Dean,” he mutters, and the voice, though clearly deep in pain, is the appropriate gravel.

Pain and fear flicker across Dean’s face in equal measure. It’s clear he wants nothing more than to help, but still, he hangs back, hand drifting towards his waistband, eyeing the prostrate figure in front of him suspiciously.

Cas moans again, more insistently. “Dean,” he calls, “please…need…hurts,” he looks up and catches Dean’s gaze with his own. “ _Help me._ ”

That seems to make up Dean’s mind. “Shit,” he mutters, dropping to a crouch and propping Cas up by the shoulders. “Cas is that really you? Where’s Lucifer?”

“I’m…holding him back,” Cas grits out. “Needed to tell you…” his voice disintegrates into another pained moan.

Cas, the Cas beside Sam, frowns. “I don’t remember this happening,” he says. “I never…”

“Cas you gotta push him out,” Dean is saying urgently, shaking Cas’ shoulders and distracting Sam before he can respond. “Please.”

“He’s too strong,” Cas groans and would fall if not for Dean’s hands keeping him steady and upright.

“You’re stronger.”

“We need him. He’s the only one with a chance against the Darkness.”

“We can find another way. There’s always another way,” Dean insists, ducking his head slightly to meet Cas’ wavering gaze. “You don’t have to do this,” his voice cracks. “I need _you_.”

“This didn’t happen,” The real Cas is muttering, and Sam is beginning to suspect where this is going, and he wishes fiercely that it didn’t need to happen, or that they didn’t need to watch it happen – that they could somehow skip all the way to the end and pretend. Like it could ever be that easy.

“I don’t have much time,” Cas says to Dean. “He’s going to come back soon and I have something I want – no, _need_ – to tell you. In case I never get the chance again.”

“Cas,” Dean’s hands tighten round the angel’s shoulders. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like this is the end. Of you. Of –”

“I love you, Dean.” Cas gasps out.

Dean freezes. So does the world.

“I don’t know when I became capable of love,” Cas continues, not looking at Dean. “But,” he winces at some inner pain, “from the second I knew that I could, I knew that I loved you. I’m not sure I know to describe it – I don’t know if human words could adequately capture it…” he trails off, eyes turning inward for a brief second. “…but it was like a new sun, or a new god came into being and caught me in its orbit...I was helpless…caught in this terrible, wonderful light…because of you,” he raises his head to watch the patchwork of emotions play out over Dean’s face. Fear gives out to hope gives out to grief – each as plain and easy to read as if they were written in pen on his cheeks. Sam has rarely seen his brother so vulnerable or so open, and he wonders (more to keep his mind from what he knows is coming than anything else) if Dean knows, if he’s choosing to share all this, or if he just can’t help it.

“Cas,” he chokes out. “I’m sorry…” For all that his eyes never leave the angel, he seems to miss the cruel smile that flashes briefly across Cas’ face. Or maybe Sam’s only seeing it because he knows it all so well.

“No,” The Cas beside Sam is whispering to himself. “That’s not it. That’s not how it felt. He’s twisting everything up, poisoning it…”

The Cas in front of Dean just shakes his head. “It’s ok. It doesn’t hurt me anymore,” he pauses. “I don’t expect you to love me back – especially after all that I’ve done. I just wanted to say it in case I don’t–” his voice cuts off as Dean kisses him.

Sam’s instinctual wave of shock is almost instantly superseded by an even larger wave of joy which is quickly eclipsed by a veritable tsunami of dread.

His dread is compounded by the strangled gasp, the involuntary sound of horror, that the Cas next to him lets out as he doubles over, clutching his stomach as if he’s been stabbed. “No,” he moans brokenly, “no.”

“Cas don’t look,” Sam says, gripping his shoulder and trying to pull him away. “It’s only going to get worse, don’t look.”

Cas doesn’t seem able to hear him. “This didn’t happen,” he says again, eyes filled with pain and rage. “This was just a dream, just a nightmare he sent to taunt me. It wasn’t meant to be real.”

Sam doesn’t need to ask who: the whole scenario is achingly familiar to him. He adjusts his hold so that he’s gripping Cas’ forearms, both to comfort him and to hold him back when Dean lets out his own gasp of pain and surprise. “We can’t do anything –” he says, though it kills him to say it, and he knows he’s a hypocrite for saying it. “ – Except try and stay out of the way. Let’s not make it any more painful or confusing than it already was.”

In front of them, Dean is trying desperately to pull away, but ‘Cas’ is biting down hard on his lips, bringing his hands up to roughly tug Dean even closer – fingers digging bruisingly tight into Dean’s skin and forcing him to stay put. Somewhere in his throat, he’s started to laugh at Dean’s panicked but ineffectual jerks of the head. Despite his words to Cas, it’s taking everything Sam has not to try and intervene, incorporeality be damned. Cas is practically vibrating at his side, desperate to act but powerless (in this half neutered, wingless state) to change the past.

With a pained and garbled cry, Dean wrenches his head back, finally managing to free himself. A chunk of flesh stays behind, however, and blood splatters the tarmac – gleaming like uncut rubies in the pools of the impala’s headlights. Dean scrambles back until he’s resting on the car, eyes wide with unguarded fear and shame, blood dripping from his upper lip and down his chin. Slowly, he raises a trembling hand to his mouth, wincing as his fingers feel out the damage, smearing blood over his mouth and cheeks. He looks, suddenly, much younger than before.

There’s a sickening swallowing sound that Sam can’t bring himself to think about and then the air is filled with the sound of cruel laughter: filling the horizon and echoing back to the empty road. The world seems to be shaking: the trees moving furiously in the windless night, the stars smudging into trembling white lines, both in the sky above and on the wet road below.

“That,” Lucifer snorts, bent over with mirth, “was way more fun than I thought it would be. And much, much, _much_ easier.”

“Lucifer?” Dean’s voice is jarringly small and uncertain and Cas (the real Cas) groans in pain.

“The one and only,” Lucifer twirls his hand and bends again – this time in a mock bow.

The extra seconds of the gesture give Dean time to collect himself somewhat: he tenses noticeably, trying to draw himself up taller, even if his position on the ground renders him totally vulnerable. “Where’s Cas?” He demands hotly, covering his fear with anger. “What’ve you done to him? Where’ve you sent him?”

Lucifer raises his head, grinning with Cas’ mouth a smile dripping Dean’s own blood. “Cas was never _here_ you idiot. Honestly, I know Sam’s the smart one but I didn’t think the difference was _that_ pronounced. Though let’s not give your stupidity all the credit: I am a _great_ actor, after all.”

“So that was…”

“Me the whole time?” Lucifer is still laughing. “Yup. And can I just say: you’re a great kisser.”

“Shut up!” Dean is shaking now, trying subtly to get to his feet.

Lucifer pouts at him, slowly advancing forwards so that any move Dean makes will inevitably bring them closer together. “Make me.”

“Cas,” Dean pleads desperately, giving up on escaping and collapsing back to the ground. He keeps his eyes trained on Cas/Lucifers face, searching and searching for something that simply isn’t there. “Cas please I know you can hear me – come back to me.”

“What makes you think he wants to come back?” Lucifer taunts, still edging closer and closer, agonisingly slowly. Dean, his back already at the car, can do nothing but watch and wait. “What’s he got out here that I can’t give him in there? You?” Lucifer laughs. “Get real. My brother may be a piss poor excuse for an angel, but he’s still a divine creation – straight from God himself and as old as the universe. And what are you?” He stops inches from Dean’s face, bringing his hand up to pat Dean’s cheek, so gently it’s a mockery. Dean still flinches involuntarily, jerking his head in the opposite direction. “Some alcoholic, insignificant ant with a tacky, old car and tired, old daddy issues. You really think my brother could love that?” Lucifer waits for Dean's shoulders to slump in dejection before delivering his next blow. "Oh so you don't know either?" he asks, and then laughs at Dean's sharp intake of breath. "Oh, he loves you alright, this brother of mine. The fool. Not that it matters. He didn't love you enough to stay, did he? Still said 'yes', didn't he? Just like Sam did last time? Interesting pattern isn't it: how everyone you love leaves you for me?"

Sam can feel Cas shaking underneath his hand, and he squeezes in what he hopes is a comforting manner, but otherwise says nothing. What can he say? What can he do? For either of them?

Dean’s head is turned away from them and from Lucifer, staring resolutely to the side. They can see a muscle tensing in his jaw, and his hands are clenched into fists on the ground beside them. But otherwise, he makes no move nor noise.

“Aww you’ve gone all quiet,” Lucifer places deceptively tender fingers under Dean’s chin, forcing his head to turn and meet his gaze. “What’s the matter…” he leans in closer again until his lips are almost brushing Dean’s once again. “…‘Cas’ got your tongue?”

Dean’s only answer is to spit in his face. Sam’s breath freezes in his throat and it’s only the distant awareness that this has already happened that stops his fear for Dean overwhelming all sensible thought. There’s dead silence as the blood-soaked saliva spatters Lucifer’s (Cas’) cheek and begins to ooze slowly down. With a stunned expression that would be comical if it weren’t also so deadly, Lucifer raises his fingers to his face, as if he can’t actually believe what has just happened. Dean takes the opportunity to throw himself to the side, rolling away and managing to spring to his feet with surprising speed and agility. He reaches back and pulls a knife – an angel blade – from his waistband in one smooth movement, breaths heavy but steady. The presence of a weapon, however ineffectual it may turn out to be, between him and Lucifer seems to steady him. Lucifer regards him, a slight smile pulling at his still bloodied lips.

“I gotta say,” he says and his tone is light: conversational. “I’m impressed. Every time you think you’ve seen it all – you humans go and surprise me with the sheer _depths_ of your stupidity and arrogance.”

“Like you’re one to talk,” Dean pants, spitting more blood onto the ground without looking away. “What did you come here anyway? What do you want?”

“To satisfy my curiosity,” Lucifer shrugs. “It occurred to me that, we’ve never really spent much quality time together – in this timeline anyway. I barely know you.”

“So?”

“Well, I wanted to see _the_ Dean Winchester. The Righteous Man who triggered my release…” Dean’s eye twitches but otherwise he portrays no outward sign of emotion. Lucifer smirks anyway and continues. “…and who fought so hard and – I hate to say it but credit where credit is due – so effectively against me during my last little trip out.”

“Yeah,” it’s Dean’s turn to sneer – face twisted and bloody but still proud. “We beat you last time, we’ll do it again.”

Lucifer seems unperturbed. “True,” he allows. “But what did it cost you last time? Are you prepared to go through that again? You gave up Sammy, can you give up dear old Cassie to be rid of dear old me?”

Dean falters, his arm dropping fractionally, his face breaking, just for a second, into pure pain. He doesn’t say anything – there’s nothing he could say.

“That’s what I thought,” Lucifer sighs in mock disappointment. “You know, I’ve been in both your brother and your angel now and it’s just _non-stop_ : ‘Dean, Dean, Dean’ day in day out. Gives me the worst kind of headache. So I thought: what is there about this one that was enough to make my brother, an _angel,_ fall and fall again? What is there about this one that Sam, _my vessel_ , was able to regain control and throw himself into that cage? There must be something special about you, I thought. Something different. So, I came to find out. But no,” Lucifer shakes his head with a sadness that could almost be genuine. “Turns out you’re no different from all the other mud monkeys: weak, sentimental, and gullible. Shame.”

“So you’re done?” Dean asks warily, shifting his feet into a defensive posture.

Lucifer smirks. “For now. Though, now that I know you’re such an easy lay, I might have to stop by again sometime.”

With a snarl, Dean lunges for Lucifer with the blade, but it passes through empty air. A second later, it crashes to the ground as Dean drops to his knees, staring at the spot where Lucifer had stood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: non-consensual, kinda gruesome kiss between Dean/Lucifer (as Cas) in this chapter. it starts at 'his voice cuts off' and ends with 'with and pained and garbled cry' tho there is also some p bloody descriptions of wounds in that paragraph if u wanna be careful, xoxo stay safe boobalas. 
> 
> thank u to everyone who's leaving such lovely comments, it really means a lot to me


	11. Everything to Say, Everything to Lose

Slowly, Cas moves to stand in front of Dean, who tenses as the familiar pants and shoes appear in his line of sight. Immediately, Cas drops to a crouch, so that their eyes are level. Sam stays back, trying to give them as much privacy as possible. He can’t see Dean’s face, but Cas’ is a mask of grief and pain – his eyes glittering with unshed tears. He looks more human than Sam has ever seen him look before. 

Cas stretches his fingers out towards Dean’s bloody mouth, but Dean jerks back. “Cas,” he chokes out. “Please…”

“You still have a scar there,” Cas murmurs. “I never noticed until now.”

“You always leave when I’m still bleeding,” Dean whispers hoarsely, barely seeming to hear what Cas said. “You only remember the blood.”

They exchange one of those looks they’ve been exchanging almost as long as they’ve known each other – the ones that always make Sam feel as if he’s watching them from outside of thick a glass box – one that he can see into but they can’t see out of. Normally it exasperates him, to be so removed from the conversation: to remain a helpless, unwanted observer to what has always been blindingly obvious (to him and, it seems, others). Now, however, he finds himself glad to be excluded from this exchange, happy for it to remain non-verbal in his presence.

As we watches their silent conversation, he fights to keep back tears of his own, Dean’s words from the motel still running through his mind. Is this one of those ‘in-betweens’ Dean had dreamed of? As much as the earlier revelations into Dean’s sexuality had surprised him, he (not to mention the rest of the goddamn world both supernatural and otherwise) isn’t exactly blind. That Dean’s feelings aren’t a notable exception to a lifelong pattern; that there might be more than simple sexual repression that’s kept him from acting all these years; that he and Cas have been restrained by a shared fear that links them even as it drives them apart, and that Cas may have irrevocably broken what’s between them without even knowing it, elevates the entire situation from a farce to something more tragic than Sam could ever have possibly imagined. Fiercely (futilely) he prays to a god he knows isn’t listening (and probably never cared much to begin with) that the real Dean will somehow buck a forty year trend and actually talk about this when they get back to the real world.

Dean breaks first, ducking his head, shoulders shaking. “I can’t bear the idea of you knowing,” he whispers, “if you didn’t know already. And I can’t bear the idea of asking – of knowing if you know.”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was real. If I’d known I could’ve…” Cas swallows.

“I barely got you back and it all went to shit again – I didn’t want to…I tried to forget.”

“I can heal the scar.”

Dean smiles sadly and brings his hand up to Cas’ face, as if to touch it. His fingers are fading away to nothing at the edges – like a ghost, or a half forgotten memory. “You got some more pressing issues,” he says, “I’m losing.”

“Shit,” Sam steps closer. “Cas we gotta go – now.”

Cas stands, reluctantly, casting about. “Where’s the door?”

“Sulphur,” Dean says, vaguely, not seeming to hear them. “I can smell sulphur. And smoke.”

“Is that…” Sam glances at Cas, who grimaces.

“Yes – Hell.”

“God, I didn’t want you to ever see this,” Dean’s eyes flicker to Cas. “Again,”

“It won’t change anything Dean,” Sam tries to assure him. “It couldn’t – I promise.”

“Sure Sammy,” Dean says wearily, getting to his feet. “And water isn’t wet and grass isn’t green. Come on. The door is at the bunker. It’s not that far.” Even as he speaks, the entrance has materialised a few feet away from them. Dean stops at the door. It’s different from the other doors – it has no dates, and instead of wood, it’s made of a dark, heavy metal. “This is it,” he says. “I’m through there.”

“The real you?”

“What’s left of me at least.”

“And the exit?”

“It shouldn’t be too far after that,” Dean frowns, “not sure how I know, but we’re near the end. Thank fuck,” he smiles a weak, bloody smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m so fucking tired.”

“When we get back,” Cas begins as Dean puts his hand on the door. “I’ll –”

“Shit,” Dean swears loudly, cutting him off. “It’s locked.”

“What?”

“Why did you lock it?” Sam presses his hand against the door, but draws it back almost immediately with a hiss of pain. “Shit. It’s hot.”

“I didn’t lock it,” Dean grunts, throwing his weight against the door. “And of course it’s hot. It’s hell.”

“Maybe you didn’t mean to lock it,” Cas suggests, frowning in thought. “It could be an involuntary subconscious response – a way to protect yourself from the memories.”

“I literally _am_ my subconscious Cas,” Dean pants, still straining against the door. “And believe me: I’ve been trying to close this door for ten years. If I could lock it don’t you think I…” he trails off as the door starts to vibrate. “Well that can’t be good,” he mutters. Then, with a cry, he flies back, _through_ Sam and Cas, as the door flies off its hinges. It hits the ground with a large metallic clang and then dissipates into nothing, leaving only vaguely scorched grass. 

“Dean!”

“You called?” Comes a voice from behind them.

Silhouetted in red light streaming from the door stands yet another Dean. Sam can’t see his eyes properly in the darkness but he doesn’t need to. He recognises the red shirt, the slicked hair and the axe in his hand well enough – still sees them from time to time in his nightmares. He’s not sure what comes first – the fear or the dread: the wave of cold across his body or the involuntary step backwards – into the other Dean, who barely seems to notice, still curled up in pain on the ground.

“No,” Sam says. Then: “Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry, this chapter is quite short but the next one should be up soon


	12. TW: Dean on Dean violence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone! sorry for the delay, I've started back at uni now so these past couple weeks (and these next few weeks tbh) have all been a little hectic. hope this chapter was worth the wait.

“No,” Sam says again, forcing himself forward – between the two Deans. Cas joins him, angel blade appearing in his hand.

“Sam,” he says, “that’s –”

“Yeah,” Sam replies. “I know.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Dean asks, warily climbing to his feet. “’N how the fuck did you get here?”

“Did you really just have to fucking ask me that?” Demon Dean steps forward into the memory proper, his eyes flickering to black. The space around him warps and ripples, the ground bulging, the trees in the background curving away –as if he’s at the centre of a fisheye lens. “The spell.”

“Why would the spell bring you here?” Cas asks. “I thought you couldn’t survive in other memories except your own.”

“I thought you guys might wanna speed things up – skip straight to the end,” The spell appears next to the demon. He’s still Dean-ish, but it is no longer possible to mistake him for the real thing. His eyes are a glowing, sickly, green and, just as the Dean next to them is fading to nothing at the edges, the spell’s body is dissolving into green smoke, the hands and feet nothing more than insubstantial outlines. He grins a feral grin at the looks on their faces. “What’s the matter? You two don’t like the new look?”

“Dean’s slipping away from you,” Cas says triumphantly. “He’s fighting.”

The spell brings a ghostly hand up and examines it. “Maybe,” he shrugs. “Or maybe he’s slipping away from himself – whichever makes you feel better I guess.”

“No,” Sam says slowly. “You’re scared. And stretched to your limit. You wouldn’t’ve brought _him_ here if you were winning.”

“Nah he already told you,” Demon Dean says in an easy, almost bored tone. “I’m where you’re headed anyway – he’s just tryna save you some time.”

“Dean was never a demon in hell,” Sam snaps, before turning to Cas involuntarily. “Was he?”

“No,” Cas glares at the Deans. “He never got that far.”

“But it sure was close wasn’t it?”

Cas says nothing, pressing his mouth into a thin line.

“And this time Sammy there is gonna see how low we sunk,” Demon Dean smiles. “Now, if I were me – and I am me – I would rather face Alistair and hellfire for another forty years than look you two in the eyes right now – that’s just my own special brand of pathetic. Wouldn’t you agree: me?” he directs the last over their shoulders to Dean’s memory, who glares at him, but says nothing.

“You’re not disagreeing,” the spell says.

“Shut up,” Dean tries weakly. “And fuck off.”

“Make me.”

“I think,” the demon spreads his hands, “that you see my point. Even _if_ you two can somehow reach me before my mind snaps again–”

“And that’s a big if,” the spell breaks in.

“So even _if_ you _do_ manage, I won’t even want to come with you anyway, meaning you’ll be stuck in here forever. I’m just here to make things easier. For you and for me,” his voice is almost kind.

“And how are you going to do that exactly?” Sam asks, eyeing the demon dubiously.

Dean lets his eyes fade back to green and looks at them seriously, raising the axe in his hand. It gleams in the faintly remembered moonlight. Looking at its silver edge, something tells Sam it won’t pass straight through. He shivers even though it’s not cold. “Let me kill you now – save me the pain of doing it later.”

“Absolutely not,” Sam and Cas in unison.

“What the fuck?” the Dean behind them asks.

“Hey,” Dean shrugs, still watching them with what could pass for humanity in his green eyes, “It’s gonna happen either way and I promise to be quick about it, at least. Well,” he amends, after a second’s thought, “maybe not quick. Quickish. Or maybe not quickish. But, y’know: not slow.”

“Besides,” the spell says, “you guys probably won’t even die for real – Just wake up in the real world without me. Probably” he adds again off-handedly, shrugging. “Works best for everyone.”

“In what way does that work best for everyone?” Cas demands incredulously.

“Simple: you two get out of here and get back to fighting Lucifer or Michael or whatever Big Bad we’re up to right now, and you don’t even have to pause for an episode or two to get this shit show back into working order.”

“And what about you?”

“Ah, c’mon Sammy,” Demon Dean’s tone is soft and gentle, though he continues to twirl the axe absentmindedly in his hand. “You know I’ve always been happier wrapped up in the past – if this little road trip doesn’t prove that then I don’t know what will. Just leave me to it.”

“We’re not leaving you Dean,” Cas says firmly.

“Yeah, don’t be a fucking idiot,” Sam says.

“Tell you what,” Dean says. “Both of you look me – any me – dead in the eyes and tell me that we’ll all come through the other side and everything will be the same. You tell me that you won’t see me any differently now that my entire goddamn life’s been paraded out in front of you. And this is before hell, mind you, and hell is before the actual exit. What you’ve seen so far? Nothing compared to what’s coming up. So you look me – any me – dead in the eye and tell me that it’s all gonna be ok and nothing is going to change between us, and I’ll let you walk right on through.”

“You know we can’t promise that,” Sam pleads futilely, “but so what? Just because things will change doesn’t mean it’ll be for the worse. We can get through this and things will be better.”

“Yeah? If you could only see your faces right now. The way you’re looking at me? Like you can’t decide whether I’m a kicked puppy or some piece a shit on your shoe. You think I wanna come back to that?”

“Enough of this,” the spell says impatiently. “We tried the charm offensive and it didn’t work. You’ve played with your food enough. Just do what I brought you here for and end this.”

“Whatever you say boss,” Dean’s eyes slide to black as he swings his axe straight towards Sam.

The air around the axe ripples and tears – one reality rending at the violent intrusion of the other. Sam can’t help but watch, transfixed as it slides through the air towards him (leaving an iridescent rainbow trail behind it like spilled oil on water) and he recalls a similar feeling of disbelief and wonder to the last time Dean swung this axe at him. A sharp jerk to his arm has him stumbling backwards and into Cas, the axe passing through the spot where’d he’d just been. It snags in the air and, while Dean is distracted pulling it out, Cas shoots Sam a look that’s one part concern one part annoyance. With an immense effort, Sam forces himself back to the past they’re presently in. Nodding to Cas, they both slide into defensive positions, blades in hands.

“Oh so we’re gonna have a rematch are we?” Dean smiles. “You think you’ll manage without Cas’ grace-ex-machina from last time?” He laughs in genuine delight at their stony silence and grim expressions. “Done with talking too? Fair enough. Just know – ” he strikes abruptly towards Cas, who blocks him, then swings back, easily dodging Sam’s lunge. “ – this hurts me way more than it could ever hurt you.” He gestures vaguely as the third Dean (not their Dean, but the closest they have right now) making a noise of frustration and pain, drops to his knees. The blood from Lucifer’s attack is still dripping sluggishly from his mouth and landing on the ground. As the demon swings his axe experimentally, Dean flickers briefly.

“He might have a point,” Cas warns as they back away. “There’s no telling what destroying a memory – any memory – might do to Dean.”

“So you’re saying we can’t kill him?” Sam mutters, barely dodging another swing. “What the hell can we do then?”

“Wound or disarm, but don’t kill,” Cas suggests, slashing towards Dean’s arm with his blade. “Try to get around him. We just need to get through that door.”

“Good luck with that,” the spell says casually, leaning against the wall of the bunker. His tone and affect are diffident, almost bored, but his glowing eyes are following every movement of the scene with a precise and intense interest.

“Y’know, I think this might be good for me," Dean bats Cas’ arm away easily, barely seeming to pay any attention to either of them. He’s grinning manically; teeth bared all the way to the edge, movements light and carefree. “Give me the character resolution I never quite got in real life. Think of what I’ll become if I actually free myself of you this time. I’m the only me that’s worth a damn because I’m the only me that’s ever really seen how much you two hold me back.”

“That isn’t true,” Dean grits out from his position on the ground.

“No? Well I’m the only one that’s ever tried to do something about it at least.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Isn’t it?” Dean switches direction mid-swing – burying his axe in Dean’s shoulder.

Dean screams, and the world begins to shake – throwing Sam and Cas to the ground at the spells’ feet. He doesn’t even glance in their direction – watching the scene in front with hungry eyes, and lips twisted into a smirk. Dean reaches with trembling hands for the axe but doesn’t try to pull it out. Blood spreads under his shirt then wells and starts to drip slowly down his arm. The demon closes his own hand around it but doesn’t pull back. Instead, he drops to a crouch and puts his other hand on Dean’s face, cupping it with a strange gentleness – the action at once tender in its concern and terrible in its dominance. The ground beneath them is trembling and rupturing, but neither of them is affected by the turbulence.

“Look at me,” Demon Dean says contemptuously. “Look how broken and worthless you are. All because of that angel and that brother. Alistair was right and we both know it. We’ve always known it. All they’ve ever done is take, take, take: and you’re so broken that’s all you know to want. Dad, Sam, Alistair, Cas, what are they? Just someone stronger and smarter you attach yourself to until you’re all used up and bleeding and of no use to anyone anymore.”

“Who says…” Dean mumbles, his words trailing off.

“You’re gonna have to speak up there champ,” Demon Dean leans closer. “I didn’t catch that last bit.”

“Who says I’m all used up?” Dean’s voice is suddenly clear and strong, and he jerks his head upwards, crashing his forehead into his other nose. The demon falls back, roaring in pain and surprise as blood gushes down his face. Before anyone else has had time to really register exactly what’s going on, Dean’s on his feet, wrenching the axe from his own shoulder and throwing it in a long stead arc over Sam and Cas into his own chest.

The spell bellows in agony, green smoke pouring from his mouth like blood. The form, the body shaped like Dean, collapses into a writing pillar of green before dissipating into the air around them.

The world around them shatters like glass, lurid rainbow light flowing like lava from the cracks. The night sky falls away, the trees meltdown and into nothing; the world shrinks to the small stretch of road, encroached on all sides by the raw form of Dean’s subconscious. “Go!” Dean shouts at Sam and Cas as he too begins to fade away: leaving nothing but a faint after image – hand pointing at the exit, the red smudge of his blood lingering longer than everything else.

Stumbling, Sam and Cas make their way to the door. Cas passes over the threshold instantly, but Sam hesitates for a second – risking one last glance back. The Demon is the only Dean left, slowly dissolving yet seemingly unconcerned by his own fragmentation.

“See you soon, Sammy,” he winks. “Real soon,” and then he, along with everything else, vanishes into the chaos. Sam forces himself to turn and join Cas in the darkness. 

Then they fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're nearing the end now, but it might take a while for me to find the time to upload the rest of it now that i got classes and reading and such.


	13. Raise Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eek sorry this took a while! Life keeps getting in the way! We're so near the end now so thank you all so much for sticking with me! Love ya. 
> 
> Just a heads up, this chapter is pretty gory (or at least, it's the goriest thing i think i've ever written).

Falling in complete blackness is something Sam hopes to never experience again. He can’t even tell if he’s moving, not really, or if his stomach is just twisting to give the illusion of falling, and it’s only his own panicked breaths that give any indication of how much time is passing. The hard ground slamming into his feet, throwing him off balance, is almost a relief. At least it’s an indication of something.

“Sam?” Comes Cas’ voice, uncertain and shaken.

“I’m here.”

“Good,” Sam can’t see Cas in the dark (pressing them in tight on either side), but he can hear the relief in his voice. “That was…disconcerting.”

“That’s an understatement. Where are you?” Sam stretches his hand out, then withdraws it quickly when he hits something soft.

“Ow!”

“Sorry.” More carefully this time, Sam reaches in the dark until he feels the edge of Cas’ trench coat, shuffling so that they’re standing side by side.

“What now?” Cas asks.

“We find Dean, the real Dean” Sam says grimly, forcing himself to start walking forward in the blackness. “Stay beside me.”

It’s impossible to know if they’re going in the right direction, but they shuffle dutifully forward, stumbling once or twice over uneven ground (the only real indication that they’re even moving at all). Sounds begin to creep in around them – disturbing for their muffled gentleness and banality. The slow, soft dripping accompanied by the low whine of metal swaying (not unlike a port at night time) is almost serene, and this (more than the screams and wails he was expecting ever could’ve) unnerves Sam. Underneath it all is a distant, scattered drum beat – echoing off the walls around them so that it’s coming from everywhere at once. 

“Dean?” Cas whispers – the sound almost instantly vanishing in the darkness. Nothing changes, the sounds continue, and no demons or monsters spring their trap. Sam squints hopelessly into the dark, but nothing within it stirs.

Belatedly, Sam thinks to feel in his pocket for the lighter he carries in reality. To his surprise (and chagrin), it’s there. “Hold on,” he mutters.

It takes a couple of tries (his hands are shaking) but he eventually coaxes a small, flickering flame to life. Cas’ tight face is illuminated faintly: mouth a thin line, wrinkles deep around the eyes. The shadows make him look old. Old and tired and worn thin. Sam feels the same way.

Carefully he lifts the flame higher – revealing vague and twisted shapes. He had half expected (even hoped) for the light to prompt some change – to kick start the memory into action . Instead, the eerily empty chains and hooks (the source of the gentle swaying and dripping) continue to swing slowly, peacefully. The light dances off something shiny on the points, and off of unidentifiable puddles congealing on the floor, the only signs that life (or not life) has occurred here. Underneath it all, the drumbeat continues.

“This is…Hell?” Sam asks, feeling (in a vaguely guilty and disturbed manner) almost let down by its mundanity.

“This is part of hell,” Cas frowns, “Dean’s part, I suppose.”

As Sam movies the lighter slowly around, the tiny flame reveals a strange sculpture, still almost completely in shadow. It’s too straight to be random or a natural feature of the landscape, yet with odd protrusions and additions that speak of something organic.

Cautiously, they edge towards it – the light revealing the beginnings of curves and contours, the erratic beating gets louder and faster as they approach, emanating from the structure itself. They must be about ten steps away when Sam can make out the outline of a familiar hand, hanging limply, streaked with filth, blood dripping slowly off the fingers.

“Dean,” he breathes, before he can stop himself.

Immediately, Cas jumps forward – closing the distance between them and Dean, squinting at the side facing away from them. Sam edges forward more cautiously, casting his head around, holding the lighter up higher. The lack of any one (or anything) has him on edge. He’s about five steps away when Cas makes a terrible, bone-chilling, retching sound – the sort of sound that Sam’s always hoped angels couldn’t make, because that would mean there were things in the world so awful that even angels couldn’t comprehend them. Cas’ eyes are wide, his mouth is hanging open, frozen. His angel blade slips from his lax fingers and lands in a red pool at his feet. 

“Cas?” Sam reaches out to grab his shoulder, simultaneously turning his head to see whatever it is that Cas is seeing.

“No, Sam” Cas chokes out, his voice barely more than a croak. “Don’t look. Don’t look.”

Too late.

Sam doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t want to look anymore. He can’t turn away. He wants to be sick but he can barely even breathe. There’s a horrible gagging sound. It’s coming from his mouth. His hand is on Cas’ shoulder, and he faintly hears the angel’s gasp of pain as he squeezes hard enough to bruise, but he can’t do anything except squeeze harder.

When Lucifer possessed him he had torn people apart with his bare hands. He had watched his fingers close and Cas’ body blow apart. He’d beheaded Gordon with cheese wire; sliced open countless monsters and watched countless more devour or be devoured. Hell, he’s even been to hell, and what little of those memories remain are still enough to have him waking in cold sweats.

But nothing, _nothing_ , from even his blood-soaked life could ever be enough to prepare him for this.

Dean. His brother ( _his brother)_ is stretched out on the rack – jagged metal shards piercing cloth, skin, muscles and bones alike, pinning him place. The flesh around the wounds is torn and ragged from where, forgetting himself in his pain, he’s pulled against the bindings. His clothing is indistinguishable from his skin: both are so caked with layers of blood that it’s all just red. There’s much, much more blood than a human can safely lose in life (though this isn’t life of course). Some of it is dull and rusty, long dry, while some is sparkling scarlet – newly spilt.

Sam registers these gruesome but expected details quickly, his mind pushing them to the periphery of his perception – he can come back to them once the focal points are processed.

Dean’s eyes have been pried open. Delicate, spider web thin silver threads are preventing his lids from closing. His eyes are darting and twitching furiously, red-rimmed. His head is angled forwards and downwards, forcing him to stare down towards his chest.

The skin, and muscles have been carved away, the ribs ripped out and discarded carelessly on the ground. Dean’s heart (the source of the erratic beating) pulses furiously – fluttering and convulsing as his lungs expand faintly as he’s forced to watch it all. Now that they’re close, they can hear his shallow, frantic breaths.

The lighter in Sam’s hand flickers out, plunging them back into darkness, allowing them to move again.

“Dean! God –” Sam reaches forward blindly, hands skittering over where the worst wounds have been burned into his mind, resting on his brother’s face. “We’re here Dean. We’re here.”

Dean seems unable to reply – but the beating of his heart picks up again, so fast that Sam would be worried in any other circumstance. Now it barely even registers.

“Cas, how do we…”

“I don’t know. We need light. Maybe I can –” Cas cuts off as fire bursts to life around them – the walls themselves igniting. A wall of flame shoots up between them and Dean – the force of the heat throwing them backwards. Smoke collects above them, black and roiling. Thick tendrils ooze down and coil around Dean – twisting around his exposed heart and squeezing gently. Dean makes a soft whimpering sound, before forcing his teeth shut with an audible crack so the smoke can’t get down his throat. 

Laughter fills the air around them, coming from the smoke itself as it coalesces into the rough outline of almost a man. “And the Lord said: Let there be light…” says an echoing, raspy voice as the smoke cackles to itself, bringing a clawed hand up to stroke Dean’s face, who flinches – eyes roving wildly. “Beautiful isn’t it? Truly a work of art. I know you two took the symbolic route to get here, but I’ve always preferred to be a touch more…literal in my journeys. Especially with this one, he’s not really one for metaphors. No,” The hand drifts lower, towards his chest cavity, “he prefers to get right to the _heart_ of the matter…”

“Don’t touch him,” hisses Cas.

The figure pauses, chuckles lowly, then grab’s Dean’s heart and squeezes viciously. Dean wails in agony – tearing the skin and flesh at his shoulders and hands as he tries to tug away. Blood spurts sluggishly from his wounds, leaving shining trails on his already scarlet skin.

“Stop,” Sam finds himself begging. “Stop!”

A gash in the smoke that could be a mouth twists into something that smells vaguely of a smile. “Ah-ha, you must be Sammy – Deano sure does love to scream for you. You know me of course – or you’ve guessed. You were always the smart one.” It steps away and Dean sags in relief, tears streaming from his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, just hangs there panting, heartbeats slowly regaining some form of rhythm. 

“Alistair.” And as Sam says his name, the demon takes on the more familiar form he remembers. “I killed you.”

For a second Alistair’s form does flicker – becoming the corpse that Sam had left him as. Alistair seems unconcerned, however, for he merely frowns in mock confusion. “You sure about that?” he asks casually, as the white eyes slide back into place and the bloodstains become black smoke. “I feel pretty alive.” He waves a hand dismissively, “I know, I know, I’m not really ‘real’. Not like you two. But reality is such a…limited way to see the world. Truth: Lies, Fact: Fiction, Now: Then, Life: Death. These aren’t so much binaries as…states of mind. And what a state of mind we’re in – ripe for the taking. That’s the first thing I’m going to teach Dean when he breaks, y’know. That’s what this all comes down to. States of mind. He’s going to take to it so well. Such a good student. So eager to please.”

“You won’t get the chance,” Cas declares angrily. “Not again.”

Alistair narrows his eyes slightly. “Touching,” he murmurs. “But you’re a tad early, Angel. Not in the script quite yet.” He flicks his wrist and Cas lurches into the air, careening through the flames and into a knot of chains, which instantly coil around him like metal snakes – binding his hands behind his back as his angel blade clatters to the ground.

“Shit,” Sam starts towards him, but Alistair’s power freezes him in place before he can even take one step.

“Sam, Sam, Sammy where are you going?” Alistair asks playfully “We’ve got to get started.”

A force sends Sam flying until his back hits something solid. A rack. Chains spring from nowhere and snake round his body, holding him in place. The rack begins to move him slowly forward until he’s facing Dean – barely more than an arm’s length away. He could reach him if he could only move his arms.

“Dean,” he tries pulling against the chains. “Dean, it’s gonna be ok. I’m here.”

“I wouldn’t waste your breath on him just yet,” Alistair steps between them, blocking Sam’s view. “I burst his eardrums a few weeks back. It’s just him and his heartbeat.”

“You fu –”

“Don’t get all twisted out of shape – he just needed some time to think everything over. No distractions,” Alistair tuts and pats Dean’s head with a mocking tenderness, giving Sam a knowing smile that makes his blood boil. “I’m sure you’ve noticed how hard it is to get him to concentrate.”

“Whatever you make him do, it won’t matter. We win.” There’s a flicker of smugness, even under all this fear, and Sam grabs onto it desperately – trying to project it outwards.

But Alistair only shrugs. “Depends on the game you’re playing. Now, hush for the moment...” He regards Sam critically – tilting his head and squinting at him. “Maybe,” he murmurs to himself, “ it was a little to the left? No, No. But perhaps…” he flicks his fingers, and the rack screeches back a couple of feet, so that Dean is out of reach. Alistair nods in satisfaction. “There. That’s exactly how it was the last time,” he walks to stand next to Dean, but faces away from him, still looking at Sam. 

“You know – ” he says “ – the first time this happened he didn’t even particularly look like you. He was about the same height, same eye colour. Different hair though, and we didn’t even try to get your face right. Sometimes it’s better not to overdo things or go for photorealism – you have to let the brain do all the hard work itself. We sketched a vague portrait, copied a few basic gestures and that was it. Still, that was more than enough – he’d been here thirty years and his memory wasn’t what it is, he filled in enough of the details to believe it himself. I can’t wait to see what the actual you will do to him.”

“What are you talking about?” 

“Oh Sammy don’t you get it? This is it. _The moment_. The proverbial straw whip on our mutual favourite camel’s back. The thing that kick-started this whole goddamn shitshow _._ ”

Sam goes cold. “You used me to break Dean? To break the first seal,” he croaks, voice failing him in his shock.

“I used the suggestion of you – all I had to work with at the time.” Alistair waves a hand, “but those are just semantics. And, like you said before, ancient history. Over and done with. Let’s see if we can’t breathe some new life into this re-run turned reboot shall we?”

He snaps his fingers, and Dean gasps – eyes snapping shut, head jerking upwards as guttural moans start emanating from his throat.

“Dean,” Sam begs – Cas’ faint voice joining from behind. “Dean, can you hear me?”

Dean’s eyes snap open but focus immediately on Alistair. He opens and closes his mouth but no words come out – only pants and grunts.

“Oh that’s right – I melted your tongue too. Silly me,” Alistair tilts his head slightly, and Dean chokes. “Now, what were you saying?”

“Please,” Dean’s voice is hoarse and cracking. “Please, Alistair.”

“Please what?”

“Put –” his voice gives out. He clears his throat. Tries again. “Put me back…together.”

“You know what I need to hear before I can do that.”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“Well we’re back to where we started then aren’t we?” Alistair tugs casually on a piece of metal embedded in Dean’s arm, and he screams – exposed heart fluttering. Sam flinches, Alistair notices.

“He sure is a screamer, isn’t he? More so in here than out there, I’ll bet. He’s got nothing left to prove down here.”

“Shut up,” Sam snaps, straining at his chains. “Just shut up.”

“So rude,” Alistair sighs. “Runs in the family, I guess.” He does let go, however, stepping back to let Dean catch his breath.

“Make it stop,” Dean is sobbing in now – tears making pink streaks on his bloodied face. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Then you know what you have to say.”

“No… please…” the words fade into incoherence as Dean continues to cry.

“It’s ok,” Sam finds himself saying – pleading. “It’s gonna be ok, Dean.”

At the sound of his name, Dean finally looks at him. His eyes are dim, but there’s a brief (and faint) flicker of recognition in them. “S-Sam?”

“Yeah, Dean – it’s me.”

“No. No,” Dean tries to shake his head. “You can’t be here. You’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be safe, not here.”

“Dean this isn’t happening, remember? It’s a memory – we’re in your head.”

“No. No. No.”

“I’m so sick of that word,” Alistair sighs dramatically. “Sing me a song I haven’t heard before.” Without warning, he steps forwards, plunging his hand into Dean’s chest and pulling.

Dean screams (Cas and Sam joining him) as his heart is wrenched from its position, arteries and veins straining futilely to hold it in. One by one, they give way with horrifying snaps and jets of blood. Alistair brings the still sluggishly beating heart up close, examining it dispassionately.

He sniffs it. “Interesting. Wouldn’t you agree?” For a second he’s smoke again, and then he’s directly in front of Sam, offering the heart to him. Sam wretches, twisting his head as much as he can to try to get away from the sight, from the smell, from the sound.

“No?” Alistair asks innocently. “Ah well, I guess you’ve already seen it all. How about you; angel?” With an amused tilt to his face, he throws the heart carelessly towards Cas – it lands his feet with a damp thud, still pulsing sluggishly.

“Put it back,” Cas hisses, trying to free his arms and pick it up, his voice barely audible over Dean’s heaving sobs. “Put it back you vile –”

“You know, I don’t think I will,” Alistair drifts back to Dean and rests a bloody hand on his heaving shoulder. “Not when I think we’re finally making progress.” As he speaks, the tone of Dean’s cries begins to shift. Slowly, then all at once, the pain gives way to laughter – hard and hysterical. It bounces and echoes off the air around them, multiplying and surrounding them like a hyena pack, circling from the shadows.

“You,” he wheezes, still looking down. “You ripped my fucking heart out. Bit on the nose, isn’t it?”

“You’ve never been one for nuance Deano,” Alistair drawls. “I didn’t want the symbolism to get lost on you.”

“What am I meant to do now?” Dean demands, still laughing. “With this big fucking hole inside me?”

“I think you know.”

“Yes,” Dean says and everything in the world (the chains, the flames, Dean’s heartbeat) apart from Sam’s breathing and the still echoing laughter stops in its tracks.

“Yes?” Alistair smiles, widely. For a brief moment, his eyes become human again, shining with triumph. “Yes, what?”

“You know what.”

“I want to hear _you_ say it. Yes, what?”

“Yes I fucking know what I have to do,” Dean glares at Alistair. “Yes, I’ll fucking do it. Just let me down.”

“No, Dean,” Sam pleads. “You don’t have to. Not this time.”

“Funny – that’s what you said last time too,” Alistair murmurs. He waves a hand, and the metal piercing Dean’s skin vanishes into smoke. The wounds, the blood, the hole in his chest, remain.

Dean falls to his hands and knees, grimacing as he hits the ground. “That hurt.”

“You’ll get over it. Now – ” Alistair pulls Dean to his feet, gently placing a knife into his hands as he does so, “ – all you have to do is go over there –” he points at Sam “– and slice your brother’s heart out and _all_ the pain will go away. I promise.”

Dean makes a small noise in the back of his throat, and looks at Sam for the first time since Alistair ripped his heart out. Sam’s breath catches at the sight of Dean’s eyes – brimming with pain, shame and unshed tears. He can’t help but look away – only for a second. But, by the time he twists his head back the tears are gone, the eyes dead. Dean takes a faltering step – legs nearly giving out beneath him – clutching the knife tightly.

“Stop,” Cas calls from behind them – tugging futiley at his chains. “Don’t do this. Dean –”

“I thought I said you weren’t in this episode,” Alistair says, and Cas’ voice cuts off like he’s been muted. “Now remember your lines Sammy – do me proud.”

Sam barely hears him – his whole world has narrowed to slowly shrinking space between him and Dean.

“I’m sorry,” Dean’s voice is ragged. “I’ll…I’ll try to make it quick.”

“You need to remember,” Sam doesn’t try to keep the desperation out his voice. “You don’t wanna do this.”

“Of course I don’t wanna do this. This is the last thing I wanna do.”

“Then don’t. There’s got to be another way. There’s _always_ another way.”

“There is,” Alistair breaks in. “You can get back on the rack and we’ll go back to where we started. If that’s what you want. I can’t force you – it’s against my religion.”

Dean’s face crumples. “I can’t…I can’t do that Sam. I’m sorry.” He closes the distance between them – stopping just an arm’s length away. Some of the chains binding Sam dissolve into smoke – and he desperately brings his arm up to grasp Dean’s wrist – keeping the blade at bay. 

“Please Dean – I’m your brother,” he says frantically. “Please don’t do this to me – to us. Please wake up. Please remember. Please.” Out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees Alistair mouthing the words as he says them, a sickly smile on his face. When he sees Sam looking, he nods encouragingly.

“It just hurts so much,” Dean lowers his head. “I’m so tired of hurting Sammy,” he breathes, barely audible. “I just need it to stop. I’m sorry; I just can’t be your brother anymore. I can’t be anything anymore.”

A fear, a new kind of fear, threatens to overwhelm Sam. It’s not fear of the pain he’s about to be in, or the fear he’s been feeling since this spell trapped them in Dean’s head. No, it’s fear at the sheer look of exhaustion in Dean’s eyes, at the utter defeat in the slump of his shoulders – so completely unlike the Dean of _his_ memories. It’s a fear so new and sharp that the need to mitigate it overwhelms everything else. He needs it to be ok: he needs Dean to be ok, more than he needs anything else right now. Without thinking, he lets go of Dean’s arm, bringing his hands up to cup his older brother’s face, forcing Dean to meet his eyes again. “Alright,” he says. “Alright. Do it.”

“What?” Dean looks confused, his eyes widening. He hears Cas call out in shock and alarm. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam can see that the smug smile’s been wiped off Alistair’s face – and that alone tells Sam this is what he needs to do.

“You don’t have to hurt anymore,” he tells Dean, taking a deep, shaky breath. “You don’t need to try. I’m here for you, whatever happens. Do what you have to.” Keeping one hand on Dean’s face, he moves the other back to the knife, pulling it gently towards his chest.

“What are you doing?” Alistair hisses, lunging for the blade, his hand freezing in mid-air as the tip pierces Sam’s skin.

“You did this for me,” Sam ignores Alistair, ignores the first flashes of pain and the warm bursts of blood. All he lets himself be aware of is Dean. Dean’s shaking hand, his clammy skin, his ragged breaths, the black hole in his chest. “For thirty years you’ve been doing this for me. You always do this for me. This time, let me do this for you. We’ll get through it. We always get through it. Ok?” He meets Dean’s eyes and tries to push everything into them from his own.

Dean nods and pushes the blade deeper. Blood spurts and there’s pain – deep burning pain. Sam gasps involuntarily and Dean’s other hand clasps his arm – squeezing gently, a comforting counterbalance to the pain.

“No,” Alistair’s voice distorts – his human form collapsing them reforming. He tries to pull Dean back – but strong, tan arms encircle him, wrenching him away.

“I can hold him,” Cas grunts. “Finish it.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean says again as he pushes deeper still. And then: “Thank you.”

Sam barely hears him over the rushing in his ears. He coughs and feels blood spill down his chin, tears down his cheeks. The world around them is fading – everything is shrinking to the agony in his chest as Dean hacks and slices and carves and…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is this song by brandie charlie  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDXvzhnG3V4   
> (THE LYRICS ARE ABSOLOUTELY, DEFINITELY NOT RELEVANT TO ANYTHING OR ANYONE THO)


	14. Narnia, or Something

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh can't believe I finally got to the end of this fucking thing, thank u all for sticking with me even though i said it would all be posted by the end of summer!

…everything falls away. The rack, the chains, the knife all vanish. Sam collapses to the ground, clutching at his chest. When he raises a shaking hand to his face, swimming in and out of focus, the fingers are clean and dry. Before he really has time to process anything, something is pulling him roughly to his feet.

“Sam?” Dean is frantic, his eyes darting, his hands running over Sam’s arms and shoulders, cupping the back of his head – assessing for damage. “Shit Sammy – talk to me.”

“Is it you?” Sam’s voice cracks but he can’t bring himself to care. “The _you_ you?”

“Yeah,” Dean smiles shakily, and it’s _him._ It’s his smile, his eyes. It’s Dean as he _is_ not as he was and he’s just that little bit more vibrant than all the other Dean’s they’ve met, just that little bit more _here_. “It’s me,” he says as looks down at himself. There are few scratches on his face and arms, blood splatters on his shirt and a haunted look in his eyes, but otherwise he seems unhurt. “More or less.”.

“Oh thank fuck,” Sam pulls Dean ( _the_ Dean, _their_ Dean, _his_ Dean) into a bear hug. A second later, he feels Cas join them – arms encircling them a little stiffly, but endearingly so.

After a few seconds they break apart, awkwardly, avoiding eye contact. Sam takes stock of their surroundings. They are, once again, in a long, narrow corridor – empty this time but for them and, inevitably, a door. It’s unmarked, and slightly ajar. Dean approaches it, resting his hand on the wood, then stops.

“This is it,” he says, voice equal parts relief and dread. 

“Do you know what’s behind it?” Cas asks.

Dean shakes his head. “Not a fucking clue.”

“The spell said…” Sam hesitates, not wanting to make this worse, but also not wanting to sugarcoat what’s coming. “…It said that the exit was in your ‘dead centre’.”

“Yeah I remember – kinda,” Dean frowns.

“You do?”

“Yeah well, I was there, sort of. It was me after all. It was all me,” his eyes move downwards as he hunches his shoulders. “All of it,” he repeats in a lower voice.

“Dean we don’t blame you for anything that we saw,” Cas takes a step forward. “If anything it’s –”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Dean breaks in firmly. “Ok?”

Cas and Sam exchange quick looks of dismay – though really neither is surprised.

“Dean, we can’t just ignore that this happened. You know that right?” Sam says as gently as he can. “It’s not going to go away.”

Dean grimaces as his gaze moves from Sam to Cas’ face. “Yeah,” he grits out. “But in case you’ve forgotten I’m stuck in my own damn head where I can’t fucking lie and _the only_ way out is through some mystery memory that’s apparently more intimate and painful than literally everything else you’ve seen or I’ve been – _including_ literal hell where I stabbed you in the goddamn heart. So _excuse_ me if I don’t want to have to think about what this means right now, and just tell me we’re not going to talk about it so we can get the fuck out of here.”

Sam and Cas share another quick look. “Fine,” Cas says, exasperated, Sam nodding along with him. “We won’t force you to talk about it here.”

“Great,” Dean says sarcastically. “That’s just great. But something tells me that’s the best deal I’m going to get?”

“We’re sorry,” Sam says, and means it. “But we can’t just forget, and neither can you.”

“You’re probably right,” Dean sighs, “so let’s get this show on the road.”

He pushes the door all the way open, only to be greeted by a rack of clothes – mostly plaid shirts and dark jeans. Dean glances over his shoulder to Sam and Cas, who look equally nonplussed. After a few confused seconds of standings, they start to carefully push through them, moving through a forest of denim and cotton, until they emerge into a dark, dingy motel bedroom via what turns out to be a closet. The flimsy wicker doors they’ve just come through cast long shadows onto the carpet and up onto the walls as they filter the dirty orange of the streetlight outside, striping the room like a cage.

It doesn’t take long for it to become apparent that the space is just _wrong_. Everything is too large – the table and chair are abnormally tall– the seat about level with Dean’s head. The two beds loom ominously and stretch upwards well beyond what their actual size should allow. Between them is a small crib, the only thing in the room that’s the correct proportions. The shadows are strangely angled and contorted, flickering at the edges of their vision as if alive. Sam flinches as a clawed hand reaches from the corner of his eye, but by the time he turns to face it, it’s gone. Everything is deathly quiet and, overpowering the normal motel smell of cheap detergent, is the unmistakable smell of smoke: thick and cloying.

“Is there a fire?” Cas whispers.

“No,” Dean replies – keeping his voice deliberately flat and monotonous. “For a while, after, it was all I could smell.”

The sound of a shotgun loading has them all spinning round. For a moment, the three of them stare blankly at the empty space in front of them, before a small voice has their heads turning downwards.

“Stay back,” says the small child at their feet, his face pale yet determined. He clutches the shotgun in tiny hands and, though it must be heavy, his arms don’t shake as he aims it towards them. Nervous eyes dart between them and the cot. Behind him, the door ( _the_ door they all collectively realise as they see it for the first time) rises, dark and foreboding.

Dean freezes, mouth agape as he stares at the boy. The boy stares back. They have the same eyes – though not much else. There is, Cas thinks, a continuity in the set of their shoulders, the way their hands curve around the gun and, perhaps, the way they angle themselves between the danger and Sam.

“Uh- hi,” Sam says hoarsely. “Hi, Dean.”

“How do you know my name?” Dean demands. “Who are you? How did you get here?”

“It’s me,” Sam takes a step forward, Dean takes a step back, nearly tripping in his haste, the shotgun dipping towards the ground. “It’s Sam. And Cas.”

“Don’t Lie to me! Sam’s over there,” Dean jerks his head towards the crib. “’N he’s not that big. And Cas isn’t here yet,” he stops, frowning at the words that’ve just left his mouth. “Wait,” he mumbles. “That’s not…I don’t understand.”

“We’re, um, lost?” Sam tries weakly.

“A spell trapped us in a magical representation of your consciousness,” Cas explains earnestly. “You are simply a memory or construction of yourself, one that represents a core of your identity and the last obstacle between us and the real world – ”

“Shut up!” Dean cries angrily, stamping his foot. “I’m not a construction or a core or whatever you said. I’m real! You’re the ones that’re fake.”

“No-no,” Cas stammers, looking pleadingly over his shoulder, “I didn’t mean that –”

“We know you’re real Dean,” Sam breaks in, reaching out to try and touch Dean, who takes another quick step backwards. “We’re real too, ok, we promise. And we don’t want to hurt you either. We just need to go through that door and – ”

“No!” Dean shouts, raising the shotgun once again. “You can’t!”

Cas, startled, stares down the barrel of the gun with a confused expression. “Why not?”

“Before Dad left he said I wasn’t allowed to let anyone in or out.”

“When did he leave?”

“I don’t know,” Dean says in a small voice and suddenly he’s not in front of them anymore – he’s sitting on one of the beds, legs dangling off the side (too short to reach the floor). The gun is clutched tightly across his chest as he stares down the door. “He said that I had to: ‘keep Sammy safe’, ‘keep the door shut tight’ and that if anything ‘cept him tried to come in or out to: ‘shut my eyes and pull the trigger’”

“And when will he be back?” Sam asks

“I don’t know. He never said.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know,” Dean whispers, the shadows start to curve towards him from the corners of the room, twisting into the vague suggestions of claws and teeth. “ But Dad told me what to do, so I can’t let you out. Not unless he says so.”

“Nothing bad happens – I promise,” Sam says. 

“No,” Dean shakes his head, still not looking at them. “You can’t leave.” his voice quivers a little. “Not ‘till Dad comes back.”

A small noise has Sam turning to look at the other Dean – still rooted to the spot. He’s been so quiet all this time that Sam had forgotten he was there. There are tears trailing silently down his face as he watches his younger self, dripping off his chin and onto the floor. Sam’s eyes upon him seems to snap him out of whatever state he’s been in, for he wipes the tears away, nodding at whatever it is he needs to see in Sam’s gaze. He walks forward until he’s in front of his younger self and kneels down so they’re at eye level. “Hey,” he says softly. “Can I show you something?”

Dean regards himself suspiciously for a few moments, then nods reluctantly. He slides off the bed and takes his hand (the gun hanging from the other) – leading himself over to the crib. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulls the quilt down, revealing nothing underneath.

“Sam!” his younger self cries frantically, wrenching his hand from the older Dean’s grip to rip the covers off. Tears begin to leak from the corners of his eyes. “Where’s he gone? What’ve you done with him?”

“He’s over there,” Dean points at Sam. “See?”

“No,” Dean sobs. “That’s _your_ Sam. Where’s my Sam? Why’s he not here?”

“He’s gone, Dean,” how strange it is to say his own name with such gentleness. He drops down to his knees again so that they’re at eye level once again. “He’s gone and he’s not coming back.”

“Dad’s going to kill me.” The words can barely be heard beneath the tears.

“He’s, uh, he’s not coming back either.”

This makes Dean cry harder. “He found out, didn’t he?” he gasps out. “That I didn’t do a good job. He hates me and that’s why he’s not coming back.”

“Hey now, none of that” Dean says firmly, but kindly. Gently, he puts a hand on his own, tiny, shoulder and rubs it comfortingly, waiting for the tears to subside a little. “Look over there,” he points at Sam. “Look at how fu – uh – freaking _tall_ Sammy is. Like a giraffe or something, right?”

“Hey,” Sam harrumphs. That prompts a watery chuckle and weak smile as young Dean nods – old Dean beams back.

“Now you tell me – do you think Sam could’ve gotten so big if you didn’t do a good job?”

Uncertain, Dean shrugs.

“You think he’d be standing there if you didn’t keep him safe?”

Almost reluctantly, Dean shakes his head.

“There we go,” Dean murmurs encouragingly. “You’ve done so well that, well, Sammy doesn’t need you to guard him anymore. Not all the time, at least.”

“But what about Dad?” Young Dean sniffs, “Why isn’t he coming back? Is he angry with me? What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing! It just that…” he fumbles for a second, knowing what he has to say, knowing dearly that he should’ve said it a long time ago, still scared to say it now. “Nobody can stay forever, and we can’t keep waiting for them to come back. We have to go out and find something new.”

“So he’s gone and Sam’s gone, just like mom,” there are tears trickling down the side of this face, Dean can remember them itching. “And now you want to leave too. You want to leave me here, alone.” The gun falls to the ground as Dean begins to cry in earnest once again, small hands covering his face. “Please,” he whispers through them, “please don’t leave.”

Dean takes himself into his arms. He’s so fragile, like a baby bird, that’s he’s scared he may break himself. He remembers thinking the same thing about Sam (when he was young) and Cas (when he was human), painfully and intimately aware of all the ways he could hurt them. Instead, he adjusts his grip and stands, kicking the fallen gun under the bed. “You’re not going to be alone,” he murmurs, “Not anymore. I’m going to take you with me.”

He sees, out the corner of his eyes, Sam and Cas exchange a look. Maybe it’s not a good idea (it’s probably not a good idea) but the thought of leaving himself here; of knowing this is where he’ll always be…it’s not something he thinks he’ll be able to survive.

Warily, they approach the door. The shadows curl in closer towards them, and the young Dean presses his face into the older Dean’s chest. Cas reaches out, trying to put his hand on the handle – but it skitters away, repelled by some invisible force.

“I think it has to be me,” Dean says. It takes a little juggling and nudging, but he manages to coax a small hand from around his neck, stooping slightly so he can reach the door. He pushes the handle down, but pauses, twisting his head round to look into his own eyes.

“You promise: Sam’ll be ok?”

“I promise,” he tries to keep his voice steady, reassuring.

“And that Dad won’t find out?”

“Nope, we won’t tell him.”

“And that,” his voice cracks, “and that I don’t have to go back?”

“Never. You ready?”

He nods, Dean feels the movement rather than seeing it, and together they push against the door. Blinding white light floods the room – smoothing the shadows and distorted proportions, leaving it just a room. Dean (both Deans) are the first to step over the threshold, then Sam then Cas, leaving the door open behind him.

For a second, they stand in the whiteness, then Dean feels Cas’ hand on his shoulder, squeezing ever so slightly. “Bend your knees,” is the only warning he gives.

Then Dean is stumbling, arms grasping air, as the witch’s house slides back into place around them – the witch’s body lying in a pool of blood at their feet.

“Well,” Dean says once he’s caught his balance and his breath. “At least we don’t have to worry about that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please enjoy this sequel that i did not intend to write but somehow also ended up writing?


End file.
